Why Ya So Jealous?

Jealousy.

                If you’re anything like, say, anyone (or me) you’d rather sit and discuss others being jealous of you, than own up to your own struggle with the green- eyed monster.  After all, jealousy is mean and petty, and nice people never feel such things.    

                Regardless, jealousy is a human emotion, and although envy is one of the seven deadly sins, we all feel its pangs from time to time.  We may deny it, we may try to reason our minds out of it, but we cannot deny it exists.

                Things that make me jealous:

1.       Thin women.  I can sort of stand women who maintain their figures through a disciplined, decidedly unfun regime of strict clean eating and Draconian exercise habits, but as for women who burble, “I’ve always been naturally slender no matter what I eat, I just can’t gain weight!” I’d like to cut those bitches.  I am comforted by the knowledge that I am not alone in that sentiment.  Paradoxically, I am even more jealous of women who:

2.       Are fat but don’t care.  I mean, where did they get such confidence?  There they are, unashamedly munching their Big Macs, already planning what caloric concoction they’ll eat for dessert, usually with a hot guy on their arm, and God, I just feel so jealous.   Their life is fun, and they’re not held prisoner by the expectations of others.  How can anyone not envy that?

3.       Women dating my ex.    It doesn’t matter if I’m the one who broke up with them.  It doesn’t make a whit of difference that they weren’t chosen over me.  I hate them with the burning fire of a thousand suns. I disgust myself.  I mean, here I am a feminist, and I’m hating some woman over some loser I don’t even want anymore, but, um, that’s still the way I feel.  Right or wrong.  Your emotions often don’t give a shit if they’re rational.

That’s just a small sampling, because there are plenty of things that have made me jealous over the course of my lifetime.  As I’ve gotten older, I find that I am less jealous, unless I cultivate it artificially by stalking people on social media.  However, it still sometimes rears its ugly head. 

                So how does one cope with jealousy?

               

1.       Accept it.  There are going to be times when someone else gets the promotion you want, the man you want, or the body you want.  The worst thing you can do is deny you’re jealous.  That leads to you actively disliking/attempting to sabotage the person you’re feeling jealousy towards.  We’ve all been in miserable situations (mainly in work settings) where a jealous person became obsessed with us and actively tried to destroy us.  That’s because instead of simply recognizing that they were jealous and moving on with their lives, they chose to deny it, blamed their pain (because jealousy is painful) on you, then tried to make you pay for it.  Denying your feelings can leads to you being an asshole.  Feeling jealous isn’t wrong.  Trying to make the object of your jealously suffer for it, however, is.

2.        Think through why you’re jealous.  Often, it’s because this person is doing something you want to do.  Maybe they’re going back to school, or they’re getting up at six am every morning to work out, or they come into work an hour early every day.  Envy is caused by some other person achieving a goal that you’d like to reach.  Nine times out of ten, it’s because they earned it.   Be honest with yourself.  I know it’s tempting to think that good things happen to certain people just because they’re lucky, but few people are consistently lucky.  What you think is luck is usually the result of hard work. 

3.       Figure out what your jealousy is trying to tell you.  Jealousy is about you, not the object of it.  I can still recall working with a nasty shit of a coworker at the Potsdam Sugar Creek while in college.  It was one of those situations where someone inexplicably hates you, and you don’t know why.  One day, he exploded, calling me a stupid douche.  When the manager tried to mediate, he told me he disliked me from the moment he first saw me.  Also, I went to the bathroom too much. (?)   He then turned to the manager and said, “I don’t have to like everyone.”  She agreed with him.  That was a productive conversation, not.  He ended up being suspended for verbally abusing me.  Later, his father, a frequent customer whom I liked, was chatting with another worker.  I overheard him saying, “I don’t understand why he’s acting this way.  He can go to college if he wants.  No one is stopping him.”  I realized then that his father knew the reason behind his son’s jealousy:  I was going to college, and earning a degree, and his son felt he was doing nothing with his life.  The ironic thing was I didn’t go to school until I was twenty-two, so I knew exactly how he felt and sympathized.  But his jealousy blinded him so much he never got to know me.   The moral is jealousy often tells us what we want out of life, if we listen.  Or what we don’t want, like being a Sugar Creek lifer.

4.       Channel your jealousy into positive energy.  Let the burning of your envy stoke your competitive fires.  For instance, if I was jealous of someone for writing a good book, I’d secretly vow to write a better book.  Then I’d work hard to get it done.

                At the end of the day, jealousy doesn’t have to be a negative emotion.  It can transform your life, become the driving force of change.  Looked at the right way, that seven deadly sin can become a virtue.