It doesn’t matter if you hunt deer, turkeys, pheasants, ducks, geese, bears or anything in between, there will come a day when you’ll be on the receiving end of some really mean-spirited jealousy. Here’s my 2 cents on this topic, based on more than 25 years of near-daily encounters (be that in-person or third hand via social media).
Let’s first set the scene:
“Snap! Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!”
Yep, it’s a deer alright — a buck — and he’s stepped out from the tamarack abyss and into your sights. Three more steps become ten. He tests the wind mere inches away from that mock scrape you freshened with doe urine just hours earlier.
His ears perk up, but it’s not because you’ve silently brought your bow to full draw. He sees a doe approaching from a nearby trail. He turns, quartering away. You anchor that bowstring, kiss the loop and let the arrow fly.
WHAP! Perfect hit. The buck lunges forward and makes a handful of bounds before stopping and collapsing in a heap. The big 10-pointer is forever yours, and it’s time to celebrate!
You might hoot and holler, or say a prayer, or merely sit in silence. One thing’s for certain: You simply can’t wait to tell everyone else about this magical moment. You don’t want to leave out a single detail and, especially in today’s age, you’re probably going to take a lot of photos and videos with your phone to document this successful hunt.
For most of us, that first outreach is going to be via text. You just HAVE to text everyone to tell them what happened!
OOF. Not so fast, you learn quickly.
“I HATE you,” chirps one buddy in feigned jest to your celebratory text. “You always seem to have a horseshoe up your butt when you go hunting.”
“Must be nice,” says the Facebook comment on your success photo. “Some of us actually have to work for a living.”
“Pfffft. Nice little 2-year-old,” puffs the ex-jock at the gas station.
“Couldn’t help yourself, could ya?” his pal chimes in. “Would’ve been a good one next year.”
“Hey, why don’t you save some for the rest of us?” quips the guy who lives 900 miles away and has never even hunted in your county, much less state.
“Gee, wish I had (insert dollar amount) so I could hunt with a (bow, crossbow, gun, hunting blind) like that.”
Why all the negative energy? Jealousy? Envy? Greed? Not quite sure, but probably all three. I do know that if you call any of these folks to the carpet for their rain-on-your-parade attitudes, they’ll say you can’t take a joke. They’re just being playfully sarcastic, or so they claim.
I’ve been hunting a long time, and this behavior is nothing new. It’s human nature, and I’m convinced such folks are being purposefully spiteful. And while I’m no psychologist, I’m pretty sure they’re reactions have everything to do with our culture’s rampant increase in soullessness.
Before you read way too much into that, just understand that my point is simply that 99% of the people we lean to these days for support truly don’t care about our happiness. They unashamedly care about their happiness because that’s what society has taught them.
Oh, sure, they might withstand our blow-by-blow hunt recaps sometimes, but that’s purely because they want someone to listen to their story when they’re time comes.
As John W. Gardner once wrote:
“Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask “What is it trying to teach me? … The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety…
“You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”
It used to really bother me when people rained on my parade. Life income has helped wash away that residue. What such comments do today are remind me that envy and jealousy are connected to a person’s inability to see what God has provided in their life. Negativity also reminds me that I need to be more thankful for all the good the Lord provides daily. Good food. Good sunsets. Good encounters with His creation. The good always override the obsession, self-doubt and self-comparisons attached to envious dialogues.
Embrace the best. Ignore the rest.
