In the mid 1930’s my daddy and Uncle Max were gifted wool caps. I think my Uncle Daniel received one too and I think his was green, but he and his cap don’t star in this story. Daddy got a blue cap and Uncle Max, a red one.

My daddy was the knee baby. His brother Max arrived just shy of his second birthday, robbing him of the cherished spot of the youngest. With three older sisters, an older and younger brother, Daddy felt unremarkable as the fifth kid, the nothing special middle boy. He begrudged Max’s birth in a way that only siblings can, both loving and resenting the very air that Max breathed.

It’s hard on a person in a family bent towards typecasting and branding to create distinction without clear birthright. Full of good looks, charm, smarts, and personality, when it came to his family of origin, Daddy felt he was an extra in the movie.

My six-year-old father wanted that red cap. It burned a hole in his soul that he didn’t have it. Along came a day when cap-clad Daddy and Uncle Max were chopping kindling at the wood pile. Daddy snatched the red cap from Uncle Max’s head and axed it. He hacked and spliced and severed and slashed leaving remnants of red across the wood yard, a woolen massacre.

Hearing Max’s cries, Grandma came running. Since it was the thirties, and I know how my family rolls, I suspect a switch or belt entered the crime scene. Daddy was forced to surrender his blue cap to Max. Left capless, this justice was fine by him. As long as Uncle Max didn’t have the red one, he was happy.

This same plotline went down a few decades later between two of my three brothers, the middle and youngest boys. A coveted Matchbox was totaled in a single car accident involving a kid’s size Converse sneaker. 

There was a similar lack of remorse with the Matchbox incident. The theme of if I can’t have it, then you can’t have it, deep and wide in my family. There’s something about envy that bores flesh-eating wounds into the heart causing us to hew mohair and stomp metal.

I bear witness in our world today to conversation and rhetoric that ranges from a little jelly to full out pathological. Score-keeping from a station of scarcity creates an internal encampment, emotional hoarding at its finest. 

It’s been my personal experience through lots of lessons, (some painful,) that it is both good and bad news that I don’t always get what I deserve. If others have what I desire, that’s on me.

It hurts my heart to think that my daddy didn’t feel special enough in his family. He was never happier than in fellowship with his siblings, yet some deep seeded sentiment of inequity drove him to lop at the confidence of his children and struggle to extend grace and joy for the success of those around him. That little red cap didn’t die in the wood yard. It rose again and haunted much of his life.

My daddy was a good man and I loved him. This isn’t about him not being enough or having enough in my eyes, it’s about his own view of himself and how that lens distorted the scenery around him.

Not all wrecked in the wake of envy is tangible. There are relationship injuries, gossip, sarcastic snarking, and overt and subtle tearing down. There’s withholding of happiness and praise and strategically placed doubt. Sins of omission and commission both yield harmful results.

Hotel Envy has an easy registration process. As comedian James Gregory poignantly puts it, “If you’ve been married nine times, hell, it might be you.” It takes less energy to point fingers, place blame, and topple others onto their sides. It requires little effort to subtract the significance or relevance of happiness for what others accomplish. It’s harder to aspire towards the best version of yourself and even harder still to reflect on why you haven’t arrived at your own personal dream destination. 

Jealousy has many cousins to whom these ideas also apply: anger, resentment, rage, petulance, the beat goes on.

I learned a phrase this week, cognitive reappraisal. It’s choosing to be grateful, choosing to replace negative with positive, choosing to re-wire thinking, crowding out the bad by seating the good first. I like this law of reaction capacity. I control the door. I decide what gets across the threshold.

The first time our family went to Disney World, my oldest daughter was six. When we were walking through Epcot’s World Showcase which features eleven countries, Snow White entered the park from a side character door right in front of us. Riley’s eyes grew big and she exclaimed, “I didn’t know Snow White lived in China!”

My mind went into silent Mom overdrive. That isn’t really Snow White. We’re at Epcot in Orlando, Florida. Snow White lives in the Enchanted Forest and that is definitely not in China.

A few seconds passed and Riley reappraised her six-year-old self, “It’s okay, really, I’m happy for her. It’s not what I thought, but China’s a nice place to live.”

Riley righted the moment without lingering in the negative and off we went to Germany.

Even when it’s not what I thought, even when I don’t get the red hat, even when I feel or want something different, even when another’s values or opinions or decisions clash with my own, I choose how to appraise and reappraise and I’m choosing abundance and happiness. 

Now, that’s a nice place to live.