Jealousy
Jealousy is a fascinating human emotion and one that I feel from time to time.. When I was younger, I let it take control of me and I didn’t realize that I could take control of it. I can choose not to be jealous. It isn’t easy and it takes time, patience and a lot of rational thought, but I can actually do it.
So what do I get jealous over? Funny stuff really. I mostly get jealous over experiences that I missed out on. For example, when I see a video of two friends who went out and flew remote controlled helicopters, I become filled with jealousy, mostly because that moment passed and if I tried to recreate it, it might not be the same. I wish I was there. Even worse, I imagine in vivid detail what it would have been like to be there and I long for it, which I’ll admit, is totally pointless.
Ok, here’s something totally irrational. When people tell me about their ex-girlfriends, I get jealous of those memories. Sometimes, with some people, I wish I could be their ex. I wish I was a memory of their past and something they thought about in that way in their present. Seriously, even the bad stuff. “She stole my shit, took my cats and wrote all over my walls” and I think to myself, “Gosh, why wasn’t that me?”. I’m still working on that one, because that really doesn’t make sense. I mostly just wish I had a chance to be close to that someone in that way for some period of time. [Note: I really don't want to steal cats or write on walls]
Sometimes I even wish there were thousands of me and I’m jealous that there’s only one. I’m jealous over missing out on so many things. I suppose I should just want less, but I really want to *be* more.
So why am I thinking about jealousy? It has been a topic that has surfaced a lot lately. Jealousy is a driver for a lot of things in our world and it is rarely talked about. When you think about it, you mostly think about the emotion in a relationship context, so we don’t immediately think about it playing an important role in the business world or other aspects of our lives.
The most fascinating facet of jealousy that I have a hard time understanding (and it isn’t wrong, because it really is an odd emotion and was super important for the survival of our species) is when people feel it over another person’s success. See, I live for people being successful. I celebrate it. There are drastically different measures of success and we all think of it differently, but one way I think of success is that it can simply be accomplishing your dreams — whatever they are. Why someone would want to take that away from you or do everything in their power to be negative every step of the way bewilders me, but I see it happen all of the time to successful people around me.
I guess I’m just sitting here wishing that we’d all celebrate everyone else and that we’d find joy in what we don’t have. I think I have a pretty good handle on my jealousy, but I’m going to work harder on repurposing the silly stuff into the creation of new memories. I’m going to use it as a plan to book time with friends to fly helicopters. I can’t do anything about being someone’s ex, but I can use those emotions to write stories and draw from that energy to do fun things. There won’t be 1000s of me any time soon, so I have to learn how to be happy with this one life and what I can do with its limited time.
