TEBBH on Love and Envy

The Laughing Man (the_laughing_man@hotmail.com)
Fri, 17 Dec 1999 10:13:20 +0000 (GMT) 

>From: AntiUtopia@aol.com
>The fields of study your wife seems to be talking about within the context 
>of
>PS sounds pretty interesting :)
>
>Jim

It is. Well, at least I think so, since I'm much more interested in 
philosophy than in empirical PS. And even though she kind of denies it 
('I'll do a pilot study of my empirical material in X months'), I think 
she's mainly interested in the philosophical approach. But, as she would 
say, for her the relevance of her work is very much in the _usefulness_ of 
the theoretical approach, rather than it per se. Which I think is a good 
prospective, especially since I tend to find theory so much more interesting 
than practice - and I don't totally like that in myself.

All in all, I envy her. Every morning, she can't wait to throw me out of bed 
to get started. Often she can't help telling me how happy she is to be able 
to do exactly what she is most interested in, and get paid to do it. I'm 
sometimes still looking at her with my Laughing Man eyes, wondering when the 
bubble will burst and she'll realize how futile everything is, what a 
Sisyphus work she's indulged in, like the rest of us. But her wonderful pale 
blue eyes only smiles at me, saying: I know that. I'm doing this because I 
love it.

And there I am, knowing that she knows all the objections: the components of 
vanity, of egoism, of fanaticism, of pure goddamn luxury in what she's 
doing. True, she would say, all those components are there. The first two 
are there because I'm human, the third because I love what I do so much and 
the last is a combination of the fact that I live in a society that thinks 
what I do has a value in some way and the fact that I love to do it. They 
are not objections, my beloved Laughing Man, it is quite the opposite: they 
are my sources of energy.

Yes, I envy her. In the Swedish language, however, there is a distinction 
between the envy where you yourself would like to be in her place ('avund') 
and the envy where you feel 'if I can't, she can't either', or just 'she 
can't have it' ('missunsamhet').

In the Swedish translation of the seven deadly sins, 'avund' is the 
'envy'-sin. Which is too bad for me, since I feel that envy much more than 
the similar 'missunsamhet' (being no deadly sin at all). That, dear God, and 
dearest Fellow Fishes, is not right.

/The Envious Bastard with a Bag on his Head

PS We're living in sin, I'm afraid, Jimbo my man. The cry from 'Unmade 
Beds': "I'm 28, and I'm not married  - it's *Absurd* !!" you won't hear from 
these lips, buster. (Neither will you hear me saying "I'm HIV negative, I 
have no previous criminal record - I'm a catch!"
Before you rent SPR for the second time, get "Unmade Beds" - it's 
brilliant!)

PPS Sorry for all these movie quotes I can't help dishing out. The above 
described flower describes me as so lost in movie or book-quotes I cannot 
imagine anyone saying something remotely funny or apt in any way in 
themselves. According to her, the four cornerstones of my entire dialog - 
and often the exact answers - are:
1) 'Who said that?'
2) 'Sometimes, sometimes not.'
3) 'Both' [note: always totally bipolar] 'components are important'
4) 'I'm only a man. Ein Mench. A human being being human. That's all I am.'

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