There's wealth of examples to back up study
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, August 16, 2005

I could have saved the good folks at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania a lot of time and money. Researchers at those institutions studied data from 20,000 people gathered over 30 years and concluded that the richer you are compared to your peers, the happier you're likelier to be. Well, my friend H. could have told you the same thing, for free.

Except instead of presenting her ``data'' to the American Sociological Association, she debriefs just me, in the form of a weepy phone call every time she returns from visiting someone with a fancier house than hers. ``I've decided that I just can't go over to S.'s anymore,'' she told me the other day, after being accosted by S.'s recently renovated kitchen and master bath.

My friend T. could also have given expert testimony to the sociological association. She's spending five weeks on Nantucket this summer in a four-bedroom, three-bath house with a patio and enormous yard and feels ``poor.'' And who can blame her? Her home is not only rented, but lacks a water view. ``People around here have so much money,'' she said wistfully.

``I know what you mean,'' I said, silently envying the house.

So what to do? I guess a happiness consultant would urge me to end our friendship, so I don't feel bad about not being able to spend half the summer on a gorgeous island - and yet . . . I did enjoy her guest room. After all, if you dump all your rich friends, whose deck are you going to sit on for a barbecue? Whose boat are you going to enjoy?

Meanwhile, the sociologists didn't offer any advice on how to cope with shabby-by-comparison syndrome, so I consulted some experts of my own.

``Whenever I read something about someone my age or younger who is wildly successful, thin, gorgeous, and who is spending their book-advance money redesigning their meditation room,'' the ``professor'' said, ``I make it a point to find something, anything, about someone else in my demographic who either lost it all or never had it to begin with. I much prefer the `there but for the grace of God go I' stories.''

``What I do is look for some chink in the situation,'' another petty pal advised. ``So the person's rich, well they might not get along with their parents, or maybe they don't really like their jobs, or if they don't work they feel bad about that. The trick is to keep looking until you find something that will make you feel superior.''

Barring that, if the view of your neighbor's Lexus is deflating your self-esteem, simply paint a mural of an RV up on blocks over your window. You'll feel much better.