Envy

Here's a parenting tip I haven't seen articulated in any of the several books that make up our little lighthouse of a library these days: as you drive your wife to work, talk in calm tones about whatever comes to mind (last night's dream, set in Panama; the convicted mayor of Baltimore; whether it's acceptable to leave Christmas lights up through July, etc.). Your baby, out of a sense of security or a sense of boredom - better, in this case, not to know! - will fall asleep in her car seat after about six minutes. You then drop your wife off, drive to Hampden, find a parking spot, and read the Qur'an for the duration of the nap.

That, at least, has been a relatively reliable pattern over the past few weeks. As a result, I'm now on page 332, and on pace to finish it on some side street shortly before the new semester starts. Sure, reading it in a tent in the Empty Quarter might be more aesthetically empathetic, but, well, as the book itself says, God won't give you more than you can bear. And I can bear, these days, a temporary respite from active parenting, even if it's in an idle car on a 27-degree morning.

There are a number of prominent themes in the Qur'an: God's singularity and greatness, and the consequent futility of idolatry; the imminent judgment (and, with it, the rewarding of believers and punishment of disbelievers); Muhammad's status as a messenger, rather than as a miracle-worker. But one that caught my eye was slightly less obvious: a series of warnings against the negative consequences of envy. The word's used seven times in my translation, and in rather gnostic ways, as in 45.17: "And We [i.e., God] gave them [the children of Israel] clear arguments in the affair, but they did not differ until after knowledge had come to them out of envy among themselves." Such a claim can be - and has been - read in various ways, but it's clear that envy is the source of friction, and fraction.

Which is enough to get a guy in a cooling car on a snowy street thinking. I suppose that we've all encountered envy in a rather wide range of forms. Salieri envied Mozart his sublime natural gift for composition; Picasso, we read, envied his father his aristocratic height. I envy my neighbor - especially over the past week! - his second home in distant Palm Springs; he, perhaps, envies his Californian neighbor his skill with a nine-iron. Often predictable, mundane, and often trivial, the subjects of envy point to our own insecurities, wishes, and acculturated priorities. And, as the Qur'an implies, the phenomenon of envy may be ubiquitous, but it rarely leads to much good. It's a chain with endless links.

But, as the baby snores lightly in her car seat, we wonder: does she envy us? And do we envy her? Well, yes, to the second: if I can envy a house in Palm Springs, I can certainly envy, too, a time of life that's spent without duty, that's dedicated merely to playing and to exploring. But as soon as I write that, I realize that she, in turn, may well envy her parents, as well. How lovely to be able to walk! To grasp things fluidly, and almost without thinking. She may, of course, not feel such a thing as envy, but the very fact that the next few years of her life will be largely dedicated to imitating us, and other adults, suggests that Cleo feels some affection for what she does not yet have.

So perhaps we envy each other. But, instead of wording it in such an oppositional way, let's end by phrasing it more positively. After all, she may sleep in the back seat while I read in the front, but such an arrangement feels more delightful than dichotomous. Which, I think, is a realization that also lay at the basis of a 17th-century essay on envy by Sir George Mackenzie (1636-91). "We may cure envy in ourselves," he wrote, "either by considering how useless or how ill these things were for which we envy our neighbors; or else how we possess as much or as good things. If I envy his greatness, I consider that he wants my quiet: as also I consider that he possibly envies me as much as I do him..."

Indeed. For while a nap in the car is a pleasure, so too is listening to a napper's soft breaths.