We All Experience Home Envy—Here’s What We Can Do About It
Where there is judgment, there is envy.
We may not want any part of their life or even respect them, but where there is judgment, there is envy. So many of us miss this, and once I started to explore where judgment and envy showed up together, I started to understand why I felt so trapped in my own life.
I recently made a comment about how cottagecore was "over." While my intention in saying this was to be helpful in noticing the increasing rotation of trends in the home space, something about it didn’t sit right. There was a twinge of judgment in the way I spoke, and while I still believe in what I observed, I got curious about why it bothered me in the first place.
At one of my lowest moments this year, I wrote in my journal: “I am ashamed. I have built a life that my younger self wanted. And yet I cannot shake the ways I fall short. It feels like a trap. You want something, work tirelessly for it, and achieve it, only to realize you never feel fulfilled. What is the point?”
When I couldn’t afford furniture, I envied my friends whose parents gifted them pieces. When I rented, I envied people with cooler apartments. When I bought a house, I looked longingly at nicer neighborhoods. If we don’t get to the root of our longing, we are trapped.
My comment on cottagecore may have been helpful to some, but it missed the most important part of building a home, which is knowing yourself. I might be annoyed that something I love is being overused, but what I’m really feeling is this: I cannot design my home (and share it online) without judgment.
My comment on cottagecore being “over” showed me something I desperately wanted and needed: self-acceptance.
My goal with writing this essay on home envy is to invite us all to rethink the unpleasant feelings and thoughts we have when we look at other people’s homes. My hope is that we can use these feelings to get curious about what we can do for ourselves today and start to understand the root desire of what our envy is telling us. We might not be able to afford the house or the new kitchen that we so desire, but we can start looking at the life we have in an entirely new way.