Since long before the times hold the awareness of feelings, our world developed a sense of competition based on the idea of practising daily rituals of achievement.
At same point in the history, other manifestations of competitiveness embrace the form of the sacred endeavours dedicated to Gods.
All these attempts to improve ourselves, either to impress or to gain privileged positions within the community lead to a psychological identity build on the dichotomy winner/loser.
Our mind perceives the lack of success as failure, thus, everything that lies between these two extremities is not taken into consideration.
Failure elicits feelings of disappointment, weakness, impotence, uselessness and a growing wish to change a disfavoured status.
The inner urge to modify an undesired state of facts creates a favourable disposition towards a zealous strive of surpassing inconveniences. The ardour coming from this venture is the basis of the emulation created by the condition of rivalry.
Etymologically speaking, the Greek terms of ’’zelos’’ and ’’phthonos’’ ’’represent the origin of the word ’’jealousy’’, comprising an intriguing duality of moral indignation and envy.
If the social envy could sometimes be the trigger for choosing a constructive path of surpassing the obstacles in order to achieve a more privileged status, the romantic, intimate jealousy encompasses an emotional decay that impedes a smooth love trajectory.
Jealousy is nothing but a malignant emotion having the power of obliterating the force of reason. It destroys all the logical arguments that build a rational reaction.
This controversial emotion acts like a psychotic generator of phantasmagorical, unreal situations that are prone to distort our reality. It is gradually feeding our misconceptions about relationships.
First, it appears as a legitimate and common sensical intervention in the architecture of our romantic enterprises, trying to prove that is morally justifiable.
But, once it grows, jealousy becomes an unnecessary composite of resentment, annoyance, anger and grudge, deconstructing the very core of love.
Jealousy springs out of the whole cosmos of connections with the others and with ourselves as well.
We yearn for being in control when living in a romantic situation, forgetting that the magical substance of romance itself is in fact the very lack of control, the sweet uncertainty. The same that provokes the good, old jealousy.
So, we will formulate a truism, by saying that if we want to be in a genuine, amorous relation, we will assume that jealousy might occur.
This intriguing emotion, even if it seems unfair, comes from the very heart of our conscience, being an egocentric manifestation of our personality. It is the voice of our ego, manifesting its reluctancy towards emotional freedom.
Jealousy is like smallpox, infectious, with unknown origin, causing irritability and headaches. On a personal level, it revolves around the epicentre of human significance that describes the psychological nucleus of a persona.
Unconsciously, we all put our own person in the centre of our existence, building protection walls made of bricks of self-esteem. If this wall is breeched, the menace of the unknown perils is growing more and more, we are losing the ability of relying on ourselves and the insecurities will erode our emotional balance.
In a romantic relationship, self-esteem plays a paramount role in the morphology of feelings. The low it is, the bigger the spaces between the feelings are. And this is how we fall in a trap of jealousy.
The aetiology of jealousy is represented by losing pieces of our freedom and therefore, we are trying to transcend the freedom of the loved one. We also unconsciously enslave ourselves by moving into another circle of affection,
But, in our bowels, we long for jealousy, for human suffering that makes us vulnerable monkeys, eliciting compassionate reactions from the people around us.
Jealousy unlocks the universal mythology of the human unconsciousness, where love is built on tragic encounters of the two souls, into forbidden equations of feelings. Jealousy can’t exist in solitude, it will manifest itself in relation to the other lover, from parallel dimensions of fondness.
In fact, jealousy presupposes a conflict, either within ourselves, or with other member of the love institution. It occurs when love of self (amour propre) is bigger than the affection for the loved one.
In the fabric of jealousy, even if we find delusion, there is actually a whit of a painful acknowledgement of wrongfulness. A solemnity of doubt. It is about losing the game without even trying to participate.
Jealousy is like a bird who dwells in an open cage, but it won’t fly away for fear of losing its safety. It deals more with preconceptions and their tendency to reach the denouement before the action is completed.
But, even if this shallow emotion is dressed into a dramatic coat, it embraces a fundamental alertness regarding the construction of our mind. It is jealousy that betrays the democracy of our thoughts, evoking the sense of possession on our extended self.
Jealousy is quite impractical, dealing with the intermittences of the heart when the judgement of the mind fails. It doesn’t go anywhere, but it tells a whole story about us, about our hidden heart of things. In fact, it represents an elegy for a dream.
In spite of all, in consonance with our weaknesses and doubts, jealousy illustrates a kind of grief in disguise that could shape our personality, discovering a soulful symphony of feelings.
When jealousy happens, the enchantment of love stops working, our inner devil intervenes putting the seeds of doubt into the amorous ground. But the torment that follows is more creative, animated with poetry of the heart, in a constant mourning of the lost pastures of miracle.
As an ardent passion, even greater than love itself, it displays a burning indication of unfulfillment that leads to a sheer infidelity to our own tenderness.
Our dream to live an emotional opulence destroys the embryo of love. By choosing jealousy we make our sentiments to take the wrong turn.
Thus, love itself doesn’t have the chance to hatch, being crashed by fear and suspicion.
What is it to be done in order to deal with this inconvenience of the heart ?
First of all, we need to give jealousy an (extra)ordinary face, even to ridicule it, in order to escape this prison of our mind. The pain coming from this love sickness doesn’t have to get erased, but tamed and turned into soul poetry.
We shall proceed by highlighting some incidental non recommendations:
The most often occurred fault within the event of jealousy is the construct of a harsh rivalry between the participants to a love relationship, leading to unfair comparisons between the jealouser and the jealousee.
Like a friend of mine used to say: "There is an audience for each show" . The competition is unrealistic, happening only in the pattern of our minds. So, there is no use of pondering our charm.
The deceiving emotion that we are talking about is responsible for disrupting the commodity of love, meeting existence in its own terms and that could be distressing for the most of us.
Experiencing such feelings, we are not able to meet as whole lovers, but collide as fragments of a lost passion that turned into a martyrdom. A war of feelings. And…the only opponent we have is us and us alone.
Treat jealousy as if it were a dignified pain that elicits a bellicose creativity capable of transforming pain in echoes of an existential art.
The only solution to eradicate this gap between us and the world of love is to fill it with a stream of emotions, offering love a patient and powerful fluidity.
Travel to your next level of personhood, make art from your own sorrow and thread softly on your love, cause you actually thread on your dreams!
