Jealousy

We all want to be unique. We do not want to like others. We have to be different. We have to be better than the others. When we work to be better than the others, then that would be "Healthy Competition". Good for those of us who succeed. What about those who do not?

That is where jealousy rears its ugly head. Jealousy dates back to the time of Cain and Abel, where jealousy ended up in death. To this day it continues all over the world because one person assumes being inferior to another. While that is not the only root cause of jealousy, it is a major contributor in many cases.

Jealousy is a master of disguise. It comes in various shapes, sizes and forms. Some use caring as an excuse for their jealous ways. If one cares for another and wants to dominate the activity of another, a spouse, for example, the dominated one looks at the jealousy as an admired trait with a label of he or she cares deeply for me. Since the jealous person gets admiration for those gestures, the positive enforcement encourages that behavior even more. The result some times can be wife abuse, husband abuse and could result in a death too. There are many levels of jealousy masked as caring developing into anything from the silent treatment, embarassment in front of others, not including a partner in important decisions as well as all forms of anger.

A jealous person can exhibit that characteristic as a strength of theirs, when in reality, it is a weakness. The weakness is that there is a low self esteem either deeply rooted or superficially kept in that jealous person. In order not to admit a damaging flaw of a jealous nature, that person belittles and bullies others to make themselves look better. The focus is sometimes so easily transferred to an unsuspecting passerby, that the jealous person gets away with hiding that insecurity of theirs. How many times have we come across people bad-mouthing their ex-employer? My question to them, if your ex-employer was so bad then what took you so long to get out? Most often such employees would be the ones that did not leave the employment, but were fired. And the irony is, they will poke holes in whatever you are doing, while they themselves would be far from perfect.

Not all jealousy is noisy, some can be shy, reserved and unsuspecting. Most of those people let someone else do the leg work for their jealous streak. There might be a protective family member that takes on the role of bringing out the jealously of the silent person or even a co-worker that is blinded by some characteristics of that jealous person and comes to their aid. Without intevention, one keeps doing the walk of jealousy while the helper is the enabler. The strength of the union gives momentum to both. One becomes more diligent to step in so the quiet, jealous person can act like a victim. 

A classic example from my workplace - a programmer joined us and his project manager was so impressed by the programmer's ability to identify and fix bugs, that he blindly accepted whatever the programmer recommended. Turns out that this new programmer was introducing bugs in other team members' code and then pretending to help them, with the project manager blindly nodding his head in approval. Last I heard, the project manager is making calls to companies and trying to get an entry level opening and the programmer is trying to make a livelihood on the internet, not to mention the money that this programmer owed people in my company had to be written off.

Some jokers are jealous people hiding behind a funny story so the environment will be light and jovial. The harsh reality of the underlying facts are the jokes redirect the focus on the pleasant traits of the jealous individual and not on the unpleasant ones. If someone gets hurt by their joke, it could be slight, annoying, painful or anywhere in between those stated. If you are on the receiving end of an uncomfortable joke and your emotional stability is solid, you might not pay too much attention and even get over it quickly to not give it any more thought. If you are a sensitive person, going through some personal difficulties at the time of the jokester playing his pranks, it could do serious damage to you.

There are sarcastic individuals that are deeply jealous. Downing anything or anybody as often as they can, seems to be the road they frequently travel. The most unusual thing about these people are that they hate that sarcastic trait in others and some times don't realize their behavior is on that target as well. A person who has jealousy intermingled with sarcasism mixes the two, so few people see the most undesireable trait being jealousy. The overwhelming sarcastic way seems to be taken as amusing by some and not to others, so it is a take it or leave it sort of characteristic. These are the ones to watch out. Such people are the true blood hypocrites. They will do all they can to critize others. But when they are critizied for what they are doing, everything will come crashing down and such people are known to become dangerous. Then these people will go around preaching about being resilient and being able to take what one gives.

Rarely does a strongly jealous person see this as a flaw. The people around them have either accepted this by categorizing it in the ones suggested above or have manufactured their own category. When a severely jealous person acts out, it is with a strong force and yet sometimes a person comes to give reasons or make excuses for that action of force. Cover ups are constantly being invented mostly by the victims of this emotion.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to deal with such people. Mostly, I just stay away.

Signing off.....

Rajan