Choosing the Right Pond

For those of you with two young children at your breakfast table, Cornell economist Robert H. Frank has just the experiment for you. For two successive days, perhaps as you would on any morning, take two glasses of equal size and fill them both with orange juice, each one to capacity, one for each sibling. On the third day, take the same two glasses and fill each one exactly half-way up. Finally, on the fourth day, fill one child’s glass to the top and the other child’s glass only three-quarters of the way. Now record what happened each day.

I have yet to try the experiment in my own home, but I suspect that the results I would get from my children, or you from yours, would be precisely the same as what Frank discovered to be the case. Neither child complains when both glasses are filled equally to capacity, or equally half-way to capacity. However, on that fourth day – when one sibling is given a glass three-quarters full and sees that the other sibling has been given a glass that is fully full – that is when the trouble begins: “The child with less looks first at his brother’s glass, then at his own, then back at his brother’s.” Tension starts to build from within and then any number of actions follow. At minimum, Frank explains, there is an outcry to the authority figure: “He always gets more than me!” Alternatively, one sibling will try to switch glasses with his brother, who, though innocent in the entire matter, is seen as a hostile force. Does it matter that just twenty-four hours earlier a three-quarters full glass was entirely sufficient? In the eyes of the wronged child, of course not. Frank explains that satisfaction – or more broadly speaking, happiness – is not measured in absolute terms, but on a relative basis. The name of Frank’s book is Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status, a title which tells it all. His guiding thesis is that as human beings our primary concern when it comes to status is not what we actually do or do not have, but about where we stand relative to others. Knowingly or unknowingly, we subdivide our reality into sub-groups or “ponds”: familial, professional, geographic, or otherwise; and it is by way of those sub-groups that we measure whether we are happy, or as is often the case, not happy. As H.L Mencken once explained: “Wealth can be defined as any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.” (A Mencken Chrestomathy) Human beings are funny creatures. We can be incredibly successful by certain measures, but be dissatisfied because we see what others have, and so we feel like small fish in a big pond. Or we could find ourselves in the most modest circumstances but feel on top of the world. Why? Because we see ourselves as big fish in a small pond. We see how much better we are faring than so many around us and that makes us feel, or potentially feel, very good.

Frank applies his thesis on the relative nature of status and happiness to large questions such as redistributive taxation, regulation, and government paternalism; given my one semester of macroeconomics, those topics are well beyond my pay grade. Nevertheless, anecdotally, his insights make intuitive sense. I recall my older brother coming out of his medical residency and being courted with two job offers. The pay was pretty much the same, but in one community, he knew he could work less and live like an absolute king, while in Southern California he would have to work doubly hard just to make ends meet. I recall speaking to him about his internal debate and the respective trade-offs of the two options. Ultimately, rather than being rich, rested, and single in Tennessee, he chose to be overworked, underpaid, and married in California, and I believe far happier than had he chosen otherwise. Another example: my eighth-grade daughter is studying about Charles Darwin’s famed passage through Tierra Del Fuego and how the ship’s captain, Fitzroy, kidnapped three Fuegians, brought them back to London, immersed them in the big pond of English culture, Western clothing, and Christianity and was sure that once these now civilized Fuegians returned to their little pond home of Tierra del Fuego, they would spread their newfound, superior, “big pond” knowledge. The social experiment failed miserably. Once returned to their native habitat, the three “civilized” Fuegians promptly returned to their old way of life. In other words, unlike my brother who was happy being a smaller fish in the big pond of Los Angeles, the Fuegians were happier being bigger fish, so to speak, in a smaller pond. More simply stated, it is not always self-evident which pond people will decide to swim in. How it shakes out ultimately depends on the people and the variables of a given context. Nevertheless, if you want to be happy, at some point you have to decide. You have to know yourself and your circumstances well enough to know which pond you want, because once you are swimming in it, it is relative to others in that pond that you will derive your happiness (or lack of it). To do otherwise, to swim in one pond but always look to the other, to constantly measure yourself against a world that is not your own, that is the surest way to a life of dissatisfaction and heartache.

Which, I believe, would have been really helpful advice to the first families of the biblical tradition. More than by parent-child relationships, more than by husbands and wives, the dramas of the book of Genesis are played out by way of sibling relationships and rivalries. We started with Cain and Abel, then Isaac and Ishmael, soon Rachel and Leah, and next month Joseph and his brothers. In each case, the stakes are far greater than a glass of juice at the breakfast table: the affection of parents, the love of a spouse, or the attention of God. After reading Frank’s book, it strikes me that in each case the root of the strife can be situated in the relative nature of status and happiness. “His sacrifice is accepted by God, but mine is not.” “He is the son of the favored wife, but I am not.” “She is the one blessed with children, but I am barren.” Each set of siblings is a case study for Frank’s research. And no two siblings are more at odds, more filled with enmity than this morning’s fraternal pair, Jacob and Esau. Yes, they were twins, but from the very first breath it was clear that these two would or should swim in different ponds. Their physical appearance was like night and day: Esau – rugged, red and outdoorsy; Jacob – a mild man who dwelt indoors. Jacob had the brains, Esau had the brawn. Esau had the birthright and the love of his father Isaac; Jacob had the love of his mother Rebecca and had the in-utero promise of greatness. Jacob and Esau are more than just people, they are archetypes; their story is a biblical phrasing of a philosophical or sociological question. Is it possible for two brothers, born of the same womb, but so clearly meant to swim in different ponds, to live full, satisfied lives of fulfillment and reciprocal love and affection?

We know, sadly, that the Bible’s answer will be a resounding “no.” The nineteenth-century German Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch explains that the failure of Esau and Jacob’s relationship did not just belong to them, but also, and perhaps even more so, to their parents. In Hirsch’s own words, “To try to bring up a Jacob and an Esau in the same college, make them have the same habits and hobbies, want to teach and educate them in the same way … is the surest way to court disaster…” Had Isaac and Rebecca appreciated the differences in Jacob and Esau’s characters and temperaments, had they nurtured each son according to his respective strengths and directed them each towards his own pond, then, Hirsch explains, “with their own totally different natures [they] could still have remained twin-brothers in spirit and life.” (Hirsch on Genesis 25:27) But this was not to be. In a passage no doubt reflective of what Hirsch saw in nineteenth-century family life, he marks out the road tragically not taken. There was the potential for Jacob and Esau to develop into their own selves, differentiate one from the other, celebrate each other’s achievements, soothe each other in life’s setbacks, and enjoy the richness of their respective circumstances. The potential was there, but it was never realized, and both Jacob and Esau lived with a feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction and resentment. What one brother had, the other perceived to be a slight; the blessing one received was understood to come at the other’s expense. Neither brother could ever be absolutely happy, because each brother believed his happiness had to be relative to the other. In their minds it was a zero sum game in which the increased joy of one necessarily meant a diminution in joy by the other.

Not for another twenty-some years would Jacob and Esau finally be able to reconcile. Each one needed the passage of time to cool off, each one needed to develop his own family, his own livelihood, his own sense of self in order to realize that they could, if they so chose, embrace each other, celebrate each other, and each be happy with what he had. As we will read in the coming weeks, the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, thank God, ends well. They grow up, they learn to be comfortable in their own skin, and they learn to embrace each other. But in this week before Thanksgiving, a festival that forces us to consider for what we are thankful, we know it is a story that is not just about our predecessors, but about each of us and our own families. Far too often our own family dynamics are marred by the same ruptures as we read about this morning. All too often, neither we nor our siblings have figured out a way to sit together, literally or figuratively, thankful for the blessings of our own lives while rejoicing in the blessings of our loved ones. It wasn’t easy for Jacob and Esau; it isn’t easy for us. But we dare not wait decades as they did. Life is too short, and the relationships are too precious and too few. Before it is too late, we must learn to say to each other, as Esau would one day say to Jacob: “I have enough my brother, let what you have remain yours.” It is easier to say than it is to do, it takes a conscious, active decision, but it is a task that is well within our reach if we commit to doing it. To be grateful for the blessings of our lives, to be grateful for the blessings of those we love, to choose our pond and to know the satisfaction of which our rabbis spoke: to be happy with our portion. (Pirkei Avot 4:1)