Remember to Look Up (and Around)

Last week one of my Weekly Winks was listening to Margot talk about the birds she saw flying overhead on the way to school. That experience reminded me to always look up because you never know what you might see. Over the weekend I thought about what I wrote, and I realized that looking around is just as important. 

            In our competitive world, it is so easy to get caught in the trap of looking to those who “appear” to be better off than we are in any category: weight, income, looks, career, motherhood, etc. I’m tempted to blame it on social media, and while that is a big culprit, people have been comparing and despairing forever. Remember the Joneses? Many of us are still trying to keep up with them. 

            I hate that I struggle with this, but if this blog is supposed to be an honest take on what I think about things, I have to come clean. Whether it’s the green-eyed monster, as my mother used to call it, or the “grass is greener syndrome,” we all fall prey to jealousy. (That is everyone except my husband, who really is the most self-secure person I’ve ever met. It’s super annoying until I remember how noble it is.) 

            It’s ridiculous that jealousy shows up on my radar, as I have everything I need and most of what I want, and some wants are just silly so you can’t even count the fact that you don’t have them. (For instance, I’d love to have an industrial-grade crushed ice machine, but am I really deprived without one? I think not.) It’s safe to say that the majority of us have it pretty good, yet we go on coveting one another’s vacations, countertops and jean sizes. 

            The other night I was rewatching the Christmas episode of Bless the Harts. (This is my favorite show right now, and it was created by the super talented Emily Spivey, a North Carolina native!) It’s a cartoon on FOX about a family (said Harts) living in the Piedmont. (North Carolina newbies, our state is divided into three sections: the mountains, the Piedmont and the coastal plains.)

            Anyway, the main character is Jenny (Kristen Wiig), and she’s a waitress at a fish camp (seafood restaurant) called The Last Supper, where she frequently has insightful discussions with Jesus (Kumail Nanjiani). I love their talks because I always come away with a slice of wisdom and a good laugh. In the Christmas episode, Jenny talks with Jesus about jealousy, and he tells her straight up that “feelings of jealousy are completely normal.” I immediately felt better when I heard cartoon Jesus say that.

            It’s not that I’m consumed with jealousy by any means, but it does rear its ugly head occasionally, especially when everything seems to be going wrong in my world. That’s where looking around comes into play. 

            My parents always told me that my problems (whatever they were) were valid, but that it was also important to pay attention to other people’s troubles because they might be bigger than my own. It was a lesson in perspective that I’ve never forgotten, and it’s a lesson I’m trying to pass on to my children. 

            So when the green-eyed monster pays me a visit, I look around. I see my friend, a single mom of two, working an hourly wage job to put food on the table. I see children learning about cancer from experience rather than health class. I see people waiting in line on a cold morning for affordable housing. I see an elderly person eating alone at a meat and three (diner) because he’s lost his wife, and I see a young man with only a backpack to his name wandering around a shopping center parking lot for food.             

Seeing these things is powerful, but doing something about them is even more so. Sharing whatever you’ve got with someone who needs it is kryptonite to jealousy, and more importantly, it shows the universe gratitude.

Looking around has taught me how much there is to be thankful for. Try it and see if it does the same for you.