Hundred-Foot Shadows From Six-Foot Men
“It’s sobering to consider that the rival we’re so jealous of may in fact be jealous of us.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is The Key
At the end of my senior year of high school, I met someone who I thought was really cool. He played music and made videos and had a beautiful girlfriend and everyone knew his name.
I was on my own path, performing music, playing baseball, preparing to go to college. It seemed like whatever I did, he was doing better on a bigger scale.
Over time, we became friends. But I was always struck by how cool he was. I used to go through great lengths to get this friend to notice me. I would get coffee in his neighborhood to see if he wanted to stop by. I would listen to the music he did to be able to talk about it. I incorporated his slang into my vernacular.
I saw this friend recently.
He’s living in our small home town, happy as he ever was, married with a family. I’m in LA, living next to a baseball stadium, producing commercials, growing a digital audience.
It struck me me–I used to work so hard to try and be cool. But maybe now I had become the cool one. And for what? My friend is happy. He’s happy for me. Am I happy for me?
The end result of envy is always despair. Either you don’t get what you want, and live your life in a one hundred foot shadow cast by a six foot man–or you get what you want, and realize you had been chasing a shadow the entire time.
This moment took me by surprise recently, and I can imagine that at least a few of my similarly ambitious readers have striven for the shadows of their own creation. Whether it’s clear to you or not, maybe there’s an ingredient of envy in your motivational mixture. There was in mine. Take time, take stock. What you’re working for is good, but working for it to spite someone else is bad.
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