Thursday, July 13, 2006

... but I'm JEALOUS of people with green eyes!

Jealousy. Is there any other emotion quite as toxic?

There's a kind of strength in anger; a dignity in despair. Sadness always bubbles just under the surface of compassion, often as the flipside to love or joy. But jealousy resides inside the lowest, meanest, dirtiest part of ourselves. As an emotion, it's where we humans become truly hateful.

Because we're only jealous of others when we hate something about ourselves. It's so much easier to turn an envious eye towards others' happiness, success, beauty, etc. than to cast that eye upon ourselves. And who can deny that sometimes it can be fun to revel in jealousy, to let yourself go that dirty place and slide around in the muck? Come on, admit it... we all just need to feel mean sometimes. And jealousy makes it safe; the only person we're being mean to is ourselves.

3 comments:

T. said...

Whenever I can't feel happy for someone over their successes, I know jealousy is at play. Then I get even madder at myself for thinking that way. Vicious cycle really.

heatheradair said...

I read an old-school book by Nancy Friday (think shoulder pads and cinched-waist author photo on the back flap) called "Jealousy" and it was all about the difference between jealousy and envy, and the roots of both, and the self-destructive, inwardly-hateful basis for seeing something belonging to someone else and disliking them for having it (and ourselves for NOT having)...fascinating, actually...

and we probably ALL spend more of our time than we'd admit busily jealous of one another in some capacity or another, which, really, jips us - it's a sort of self-defeating emotion that's SO hard to avoid!

I know i can't help it...and it IS fun to wallow from time-to-time...

interesting stuff!

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