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| Jealousy
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It seems to me that we are in the midst of some great jealousy epidemic. Not just ordinary jealously, but the all-consuming, the paranoid, the gut wrenching, pathological kind. We are inundated with images daily of things we don’t have, can’t afford and may never be able to obtain. There will always be someone smarter, better looking or richer. The problem seems to be the fact that we are constantly reminded of it. How many times have you heard some older person say, we were poor when I was a kid but we never knew it? In the old days people grew up in small communities, but even in big cities, your neighbors had no more or less than you did. Your schoolmates were all from your own neighborhood. While I love TV, and think it is a great educational tool , I do think it contributes greatly to our sense of lack in our own lives. The constant image of beautiful people and beautiful homes has taken a toll on our own feelings of self-worth. Many people are emotionally too immature to handle that. I remember once telling a very young man that Farrah Fawcett did not wakeup looking like that. By the same token, most successful people worked hard for their successes. Any one who has seen a TV set or a movie set close up is usually surprised by the shabbiness of it. It is pretty much all done with smoke and mirrors. Only now do we realize that no one had June and Ward Cleaver for parents, Andy Taylor didn’t exist and all those horror stories from child actors make us wonder how on earth we could have envied them. One particular female child star that I especially was jealous of has fallen so far that I cried when I saw a rare interview with her on TV. The kind of pathological jealousy that some people feel is just that. A sickness. Something learned in childhood and never out-grown. Learned behavior that is passed on from generation to generation. I do not make the distinction of jealousy from envy. I simply think there are varying degrees of the same emotion. For instance your best friend buys a very snazzy car. You love this car and always wanted one yourself. You enjoy riding in this car with your friend and make a plan to work hard, save your money and buy one for yourself. That is healthy jealousy that motivates us. Now lets say your friend buys the snazzy car and you immediately start talking behind your friends back to all your other friends about how he probably couldn’t really afford it, how you wouldn’t own one even if someone gave one to you because it’s too flashy, too hard to insure, too hard to repair and on and on and on. You and your friend drift a part because he is, of course, too good for you now. That’s unhealthy jealousy. That hurts everyone. Now let’s say you are driving down the street and at a stop light a stranger in a snazzy car pulls up beside you. You know nothing about this person. For all you know he could be a guy, working for minimum wage, delivering the car to a dealer. You are suddenly hit with that bad feeling in your gut and promptly visualize running him off the road. That is pathological jealousy. The totally destructive kind. Unfortunately we seem to be seeing more and more of that kind. We as a society need to grow up and take responsibility for our own lives. No one is really perfect. The neighbors all have their own crosses to bear. Look at the lives of the "rich and famous". We have all felt that gut wrenching pang. Fortunately some people do grow out of it. Some people just never grow.