Life Without Envy by Camille DeAngelis

Author:Camille DeAngelis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

A paranoid tendency is one obstacle to the free deployment of mental energy. The person who suffers from it usually cannot afford to become interested in the world from an objective, impartial viewpoint, and therefore is unable to learn much that is new.

—MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

BANDWIDTH AND SNUBBERY

There is a writer I greatly admire who, every time my editor asks if she’ll read my forthcoming novel, declines with a series of very good excuses. And every time I see her name on the back cover of someone else’s book I can’t help thinking, You had time to read this novel, though, didn’t you?

When I start off on this churlish line of thought, I must once again lead myself through a series of incontrovertible facts.

1. If a writer agrees to read and blurb every single manuscript that crosses his desk, he will have no time to work on his own projects.

2. If a writer agrees to read and blurb every single manuscript that crosses his desk, that willingness actually diminishes the value of his praise.

3. It is kind and gracious to support your fellow artists, particularly those who are not as far along in their careers as you are, but this does not translate into obligation of any kind. Put another way, since it bears repeating: nobody owes anybody anything.

I used to feel affronted when someone didn’t respond to my e-mail, said no to what I felt was a perfectly reasonable request, or responded with excuses when I made overtures of friendship. I felt disrespected and ignored.

Someone didn’t have the energy to give me what I wanted from them at that point in time, so I expended my energy feeling resentful about it. You see the absurdity of this, right?

You can think of energy expenditure in terms of bandwidth. Nobody has unlimited bandwidth. None of us has more than twenty-four hours in a day. We all need sleep each night. All of us have projects to complete, existing relationships to nurture, meals to cook, bills to pay. If someone says in not so many words that they don’t have time for you, they are not snubbing you. To snub someone is deliberately mean, whereas most rejection isn’t personal. In the rare cases when it is—someone you’ve been chatting with at a cocktail party excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and spends the rest of the evening slinking out of every room you walk into—what that person might think of you has absolutely no bearing on your experience anyhow. When someone says they don’t have time to spare, it’s most likely that what you’re asking of them would exceed their bandwidth.

These days, when someone tells me no, I take a moment to admire that person for politely choosing to maintain their own sanity. Instead of resenting them, I try to emulate them. There are lots and lots of people I can only encourage and support in the most general way, in 140 characters or less.

So if someone isn’t responding to you in the way you would like, this is the thing to remind yourself of: it’s bandwidth, not snubbery.

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