Caught Looking At Someone Else's Page
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Caught Looking At Someone’s Else’s Page
John Derryberry
When I'm really in a writing zone, my editor will comment on a line or two I have crafted with, I'm jealous I didn't write that line. It's such a compliment to hear someone wish they had thought of that idea, line, song, or any other creative thing. Well for me, the wordplay I have been forever jealous of is from the Modest Mouse Song, "Missed the Boat". It goes like this, "Well, we all just got caught looking at someone else's page". In a song about how so many miss the boat about life, it perfectly captures not realizing what we have.
I was sitting in my boss's office years ago complaining about the work ethic of the people across the hall. I yammered on and on about they do not do this, they do not do that, and we get paid the same. She let me drone on long enough that I lost my breath. Then, she cracked a smile and said , "John, as a young twenty-something professional, I'm going to give you some advice I wish someone had granted me a long time ago. Worry about your damn self." I laughed so hard I snorted at my boss's quick wit and the change of voice tone in her response.
She informed me how every night she would think the same thing when she started this career. She then had to remind herself her program didn't have a 100 percent success rate, all the people she helped didn't stay on the straight and narrow, and until that occurred, she needed to focus on what she was doing. In essence, she was looking at someone else's page all the time and attempting to get me to stop doing the same.
It may be the most common human reaction we have, to look at someone else and feel they have got it all together. Hell, there are still times that I fall victim to this looking at someone else's page type of thinking. It might be the root of our mental and behavioral health problems, chasing the version we created in our heads of someone else's life.
It's impossible to always stay focused on your self. When I do find myself often admiring or looking at a skill or life position, I do my best to admit that I'm a little jealous of it. I once said to a co-worker, I'm so jealous of your ability to navigate a meeting without bumping up into people's emotional space. She said thanks and then said, "I've always been jealous of your ability to not care about getting into people's emotional space to find the best course of action." We were two people wishing we had the other person's skill: it's a tale as old as time.
I look at a lot fewer pages than I did when I was twenty, maybe that comes with age, practice, or luck, probably all three. But I do know it comes from working so hard on myself that there is little room for the poisonous type of jealousy to wiggle its way into my life. I just know that when the end-of-life bell tolls for me, I don't want to have missed the boat on all the great things with which I was gifted. For that, I must keep my eyes on my own page and write the next chapter better.