Envy

That he was a Moor was bad enough. 

That he chose someone smarter, more virtuous for the job was worse.

Or so one of the worst villains in literature believed.

Envy consumes Iago, because he cannot be happy when everything is not going his way. He plays on prejudice to advance himself, but adopts any opinion, posture, or guise if that would give him what he wants. Iago, the villain in Shakespeare’s Othello, not the parrot in Disney’s Aladdin, is false in every way, because he lives only for himself.

When Othello prospers, then Iago must ingratiate himself to prosper with him. He follows only himself, having no loyalty to a cause, and only envy for a man greater than himself. Iago will shiv Othello at any moment if Othello stands in the way of his plans. Worst of all a good many of Iago’s plans revolve around harming the man he envies.

Iago wins what envy demanded within him, but God help us all never to win as Iago and envy won.

Envy is brutal. Othello found love, then envy and jealousy cost him all he had and was. Desdemona finds love and retains her honor, because she loves what is and does not envy what should not be. Desdemona sees her husband as he is : Othello as a man and a hero. Her father cannot see him as a man, but she is greater than her father. She turns godward and refuses jealousy and envy, any hatred.

Desdemona’ s death is evil, but her soul is beautiful. She is glorified in defeat. Not so for Othello, whose life has been spoilt by envy and jealousy. He is less at the hour of his death than he had been in life.

Meanwhile, the satan of the play, Iago longs for love, but envy makes love impossible. He has a wife, but Iago is consumed with jealousy, unable to forgive, forget, or find a way to go forward. Like everyone else, Iago uses all around him, because envy, covetousness, jealousy demand everything.

Envy makes love impossible. . .at least of anyone or anything other than self. This is not proper self-esteem, but a grinding, continuous, endless mental reflection on what me, myself, I am due. We can stand in a beautiful park and wonder why we cannot live there. We would rather burn down a building than suffer that man, that other man, so different from ourselves, to live there. If we cannot have the ice cream, we would make sure it melts, spoiling the treat.

We must flee from a person, some local Iago, who separates us from everyone but himself. This allows this envious man to spin lies, to gaslight, to set us up serve his plan for personal happiness. The odd thing about an Iago is that this plan has no real end. Nothing will every satisfy, because something, even if only God, always will be out of reach for someone like Iago.

He sees the cosmos and knows only desire to possess and envy of the good God, because he does not, cannot, have it all.  Instead of seeing what is or longing for what should be, the ethical way of living, an Iago longs for what should never be and cannot be.

Othello’s first line is the key to good in his soul that sadly he misses: “‘Tis better as it is.”

I say, “‘Tis best as it should be.”

The better can lead to the best. The way of envy leads to annihilating pain.

Lord have mercy on us all.