Spicy Rasam

I attended a mental health workshop last week. We talked about a lot of things and shared our experiences. I attended the workshop to cope with my grief, but I observed that many attended the workshop to cope with jealousy or envy. There was a woman who said she had a major case of FOMO (fear of missing out) because all her friends were married. Many shared they were jealous of their peers who they believed did more well in life compared to them.

We discussed about how to look at the bright side, how to find contentment in what we have achieved and how to be grateful. These are good, no doubt, but one thought kept bothering me all through the session. Is jealousy bad? Why?

I’ve always felt jealousy was a normal and primal feeling. I’ve seen a 2-year-old get jealous. I believe small children have primal, unadulterated emotions and always strive to learn from them. Why are we trying to control this feeling? Why do we feel a need to curtail it? I did ask the question to some of my friends and got many answers.

One dominating answer was ‘fear of evil eye’. More accurately, fear of ‘giving someone an evil eye’. A friend of mine told me, “I try not to be jealous and do my best to deviate from my feeling. I do not want to give the person an evil eye”.

Thanks to my overthinking 😊 and discussions/debates/fights 😐, I’ve understood that what we need to avoid is Envy, not jealousy. Jealousy is a primal, raw feeling that helps you identify what your interest area is, what you aspire to do, and what you want to do in your life.

A person who is jealous of someone with a high salary aspires to reach there, a person who is jealous of a fit person want to be fit, and a person who is jealous of someone with a happy marriage, wants a happy marriage.

Envy, on the other hand is a destructive feeling that is related to ‘evil eye’. You want the person to suffer or take a loss. I asked the people who talked to me about evil eye and all agreed that they don’t want the person they are jealous of to suffer. They wanted to reach the milestone, not pull the person down.

I think over-socialising, show-off culture and consumerism have made us fear even our primal emotion in fear of it being destructive.

Jealousy is OK. Just process the feeling and get to the bottom of why you feel this way. Who knows! Maybe you are jealous of your role model and by processing the feeling you may turn jealousy to admiration.