In Which "Success" Is A Four-Letter Word

If "schadenfreude" is the word for the wonderful happy feeling you get when something bad happens to someone else, what is the term for when someone else's happiness makes you feel like shit?

I was on the second leg of my two-bus commute to work yesterday afternoon, reading a magazine, when I noticed the article I was perusing was written by someone with whom I had graduated from college. We had been somewhat-friends when we were freshmen, until this person did something which I had considered tantamount to a betrayal of my trust. Ever since, though I was always cordial in their presence, I never again entertained any sort of fondness for them. Fast forward five years: we are a year out of college, I am on my way to my part-time job, and what do I see but a definite indication of this person's success?

My initial reaction, of course was, "Fuck. We're one year out of college, and this person is writing for a nationally-acclaimed and highly respected magazine, while I'm nowhere closer to even having an idea of what I want to do with my life." That feeling, I can tell you, is a day-ruiner. But I knew it was my primitive brain talking (my primitive brain is prone to swearing) and soon my intellectual brain kicked in: how, it rationalized, can I even compare my own success with this person's, when our goals are so drastically different? I may not be entirely sure what, exactly, my life goal is, but journalism it is not. I ruled that one out a long time ago. The comparison, therefore, is illogical.

As the day went on, I was eventually able to kick that initial feeling of crappiness and align myself with my intellectual brain's argument. But the truth is that success is so much easier to measure in other people than in oneself. Others may sweat and toil to achieve their goals, but if they do, their peers rarely see it. It is assumed that success is merely handed to them, while we ourselves, like so many Sisyphuses, continue to struggle with no end in sight. In a way, my primitive brain, in its crazy outburst of emotion, made some kind of sense.

I'd like to say that I've learned my lesson and I will never compare myself to other people again and I will live happily ever after, the end. But that's not true. Even when (and if) I do reach my goal - whatever that goal may be - I'll probably still compare my success to others', because that's part of the human condition, the pain of progress. So the grass will continue to be greener in someone else's yard. What I can hope for, though, is that I'll be able to see that mine is plenty green enough.

In Which The Past Is Revisited

What grief it is to love some people like your own
blood, and then to see them simply disappear;
to feel time bearing us away
one boxcar at a time.

-Tony Hoagland, "Two Trains"

I was awakened one morning last week by a phone call from a number I didn't know. It had a Cleveland area code, and when I answered it, it turned out to be a friend from high school, with whom I haven't spoken - or even heard of (she's not on Facebook) - in about five years. She told me she'd gotten my phone number from a mutual friend, and we spent a few minutes (she was on her way to work) catching up.

It was good to hear from her. We were very good friends "back in the day," as it were, who had fallen out of touch almost by necessity: she is a year younger than me, and when I went off to college, she was a senior in high school. I had often thought and wondered what had become of her, but because the concerns of the present almost inevitably carry more weight than those of the past, I never, whilst ensconced in my day-to-day life, found opportunity to contact her.

It would have been impossible to inform her about all the goings on of the last five years in the small amount of time we had to talk, so I didn't even try, and kept my answers to her questions general. Before we hung up she asked if I live anywhere near Corning, New York, because she will be there next weekend for a glass-blowing convention. I've never even heard of Corning, New York, and told her I would look it up. Though I guess the ball is in my court now, I haven't called her back yet.

Here's the thing: I have come to accept, for better or worse, that one of the inevitable truths of life is that we fall out of touch with people - even people we love, people we don't necessarily want to lose. I do not say that this is right, or that I am happy with it, only that, for me at least - and many other people, I think - it's the way it is. I believe that there are different friends and acquaintances for different seasons of our lives, and for someone like me, who grew up in one place but currently resides in another - one that is much farther away - this is especially true. I did not want these people to leave my life: it just happened.

When I think about why this happens, I think about the world as it is today: ironically, though more options for getting in touch with someone are available now than at any other point in human history, for some reason, we don't really take proper advantage of them. Think about it: this week you'll write "happy birthday" on half a dozen Facebook walls, but will you really be saying anything? Furthermore, whose walls will they be - those of your true friends, the people who know your secrets and your history and your hopes, or those of someone you knew in high school, with whom you have never had a direct, face-to-face conversation?

People in bygone eras, of course, didn't have this problem. If you lived in the same village all your life, you never had to say goodbye to anyone. Losing touch, therefore, is part of the price we pay for progress: the more advanced, the more "civilized" we get, the more we retreat into (as Auden would put it) "the cell of [ourselves]."

Well. I did not mean for this to be so sad. Then again, as everyone knows, not everything in life is happiness. I have not yet decided if I will call my friend back - or even look up the location of Corning, New York. Someday, maybe, I will find the time and energy to contact all those people who, though they mean so much to me, I have not properly kept in touch with. But for now, like Tony Hoagland's train, my life keeps rolling on.