It's not easy bein' green!
May. 29th, 2002 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beetigerI was going to write about something entirely else today, but I was distracted by a comment that awolf had left in someone's journal:
"You know, it's probably bad that jealousy and envy are both green, because they're commonly confused by people. I don't know why, because they're entirely different emotions, not even related."
Not even related? Of course they are! They're close family. They often share a bed, and they tend to eat each other's cookies. Jealousy and envy are indeed different emotions, but they have lot in common. They both hurt. They both are responses to another person, ways of relating. And they are real. You can't wish them away. And you shouldn't. They cry out to be worked through.
Jealousy says "I don't want you to have/do this. When you have/do this, I get less from you. When you have/do this, I become a lesser person." Jealousy comes out of the scarcity mentality of our culture, the idea that there's not enough love, not enough time, not enough to go around, that the nature of the universe is win-lose.
Jealousy has a weird kind of status in mainstream culture. In relation to non-romantic relationships, it's seen as controlling. Being jealous of a spouse's friends is generally considered unacceptable, being jealous of zir time with a new computer toy silly, being jealous over a project crazy. But in relation to romantic or sexual relationships, in our supposedly monogamous culture, it's seen as sweet, as an odd kind of declaration of love. "She must really love him, look how jealous she is!" But for me, all of these are the same thing. I don't see romantic/sexual relationships as being essentially different than our other relationships, our other priorities.
Jealousy is the extroverted cousin of fear. The typical reaction to jealousy is to want the person "causing" it to stop what they are doing, to make you feel better. But the real solutions to jealousy begin with communication and honesty, to find out whether there is actually a competition in the heart of the person whose feelings are in question, find out the why of the situation, find out whether there is in fact a problem.
Trust to believe the answer, which is indeed the hardest part. To believe that the problem is in your own perception, not in someone else's behavior, if that is in fact the case. Trust in the people you love, so that the statement "this piece of my life is not about you" does not feel like a curse.
And if there is in fact something wrong, the clarity of mind to see what should be done about it. In a good relationship, it's time to do the work to fix the actual problem, as your companion's outside focus is probably as much a symptom as a cause. In a relationship that needs to change or end, the self-love to realize that another person's choices don't define you. That the fact that someone else wants something different has nothing to do at all with who you are.
Very true. Very hard to believe.
The polyamorous community offers a term that is the "opposite" of jealousy: compersion. It's defined as a happy feeling you get seeing people you love share love with each other, and meant in a romantic/sexual sense. But it, too, can be generalized. Compersion says, "I care about you, so I'm glad that you have something that makes you happy. The happiness of the people I care about makes me a greater person." It's the ideal of the win-win view of the universe, the view that there is more than enough love to go around, that the things that are beautiful and valuable in your life don't eat up the things that are beautiful and valuable in mine. Rose-colored glasses to replace the green ones. Unrealistic? Maybe. But oh, what we might be missing if it were even a bit true!
Envy says something different. "I want what you have." Envy, among friends and lovers, is a pretty sister to jealousy. It doesn't try to take away someone else's joy. "I want what you have; you can keep it too." Distinguishing between jealousy and envy has been a great help in my own relationships. Having a friend envy you can almost make you feel good about yourself, about something good you have; having a friend be jealous of you just makes you feel blamed.
But envy is also the whiny cousin of desire, desire where you don't want to do the work to get what you want, or just can't get it. And she can get ugly. "I want what you have. I am a lesser person because you have this, and I don't." Some people soothe envy with meanness, belittling that other person, to balance the score. "I'll bet she doesn't have a functioning neuron in that pretty little head of hers." Envy's solutions are honesty, and self-love. Honesty with yourself, to see if you really want the thing in question, enough to get it if you can, enough to do the work. Self-love to see as much value in the things you have, the things you are, the things you do, as you see in others.
I don't want to sound like I'm preaching here, not to you, certainly, if you've followed me this far. This is really my rational self preaching to my emotional self. I have an extreme natural tendency toward jealousy, one I fight with all of the time. A tendency joined by the hip to a bad habit of looking for my own value in my perception of the way other people do or do not value me. It suits my life and my belief system poorly, and it frustrates me.
And of course, this all gets me to wondering why the heck envy is green anyway. Green's a color for illness, and jealousy an illness of the heart perhaps. The Guardian collects an answer from Peter Brooke, of Kinmuck, Scotland, that I like: "The 'green sickness' (chlorosis - which gives the skin a greenish hue) was once supposed to afflict young women who longed for a partner. Shakespeare was probably alluding to this detail and made Othello see Desdemona as greenish through green eyes."
But to me, green is the color of Spring, the color of life, the color of abundance in the world. Indeed, the transformation from the isolation of envy to the joy of connectedness to the Earth is how Kermit consoles himself:
***
It's not easy bein' green.
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water, or stars in the sky.
But green's the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain, or tall like a tree.
***
May your lives be filled with all the love you could wish for.
"You know, it's probably bad that jealousy and envy are both green, because they're commonly confused by people. I don't know why, because they're entirely different emotions, not even related."
Not even related? Of course they are! They're close family. They often share a bed, and they tend to eat each other's cookies. Jealousy and envy are indeed different emotions, but they have lot in common. They both hurt. They both are responses to another person, ways of relating. And they are real. You can't wish them away. And you shouldn't. They cry out to be worked through.
Jealousy says "I don't want you to have/do this. When you have/do this, I get less from you. When you have/do this, I become a lesser person." Jealousy comes out of the scarcity mentality of our culture, the idea that there's not enough love, not enough time, not enough to go around, that the nature of the universe is win-lose.
Jealousy has a weird kind of status in mainstream culture. In relation to non-romantic relationships, it's seen as controlling. Being jealous of a spouse's friends is generally considered unacceptable, being jealous of zir time with a new computer toy silly, being jealous over a project crazy. But in relation to romantic or sexual relationships, in our supposedly monogamous culture, it's seen as sweet, as an odd kind of declaration of love. "She must really love him, look how jealous she is!" But for me, all of these are the same thing. I don't see romantic/sexual relationships as being essentially different than our other relationships, our other priorities.
Jealousy is the extroverted cousin of fear. The typical reaction to jealousy is to want the person "causing" it to stop what they are doing, to make you feel better. But the real solutions to jealousy begin with communication and honesty, to find out whether there is actually a competition in the heart of the person whose feelings are in question, find out the why of the situation, find out whether there is in fact a problem.
Trust to believe the answer, which is indeed the hardest part. To believe that the problem is in your own perception, not in someone else's behavior, if that is in fact the case. Trust in the people you love, so that the statement "this piece of my life is not about you" does not feel like a curse.
And if there is in fact something wrong, the clarity of mind to see what should be done about it. In a good relationship, it's time to do the work to fix the actual problem, as your companion's outside focus is probably as much a symptom as a cause. In a relationship that needs to change or end, the self-love to realize that another person's choices don't define you. That the fact that someone else wants something different has nothing to do at all with who you are.
Very true. Very hard to believe.
The polyamorous community offers a term that is the "opposite" of jealousy: compersion. It's defined as a happy feeling you get seeing people you love share love with each other, and meant in a romantic/sexual sense. But it, too, can be generalized. Compersion says, "I care about you, so I'm glad that you have something that makes you happy. The happiness of the people I care about makes me a greater person." It's the ideal of the win-win view of the universe, the view that there is more than enough love to go around, that the things that are beautiful and valuable in your life don't eat up the things that are beautiful and valuable in mine. Rose-colored glasses to replace the green ones. Unrealistic? Maybe. But oh, what we might be missing if it were even a bit true!
Envy says something different. "I want what you have." Envy, among friends and lovers, is a pretty sister to jealousy. It doesn't try to take away someone else's joy. "I want what you have; you can keep it too." Distinguishing between jealousy and envy has been a great help in my own relationships. Having a friend envy you can almost make you feel good about yourself, about something good you have; having a friend be jealous of you just makes you feel blamed.
But envy is also the whiny cousin of desire, desire where you don't want to do the work to get what you want, or just can't get it. And she can get ugly. "I want what you have. I am a lesser person because you have this, and I don't." Some people soothe envy with meanness, belittling that other person, to balance the score. "I'll bet she doesn't have a functioning neuron in that pretty little head of hers." Envy's solutions are honesty, and self-love. Honesty with yourself, to see if you really want the thing in question, enough to get it if you can, enough to do the work. Self-love to see as much value in the things you have, the things you are, the things you do, as you see in others.
I don't want to sound like I'm preaching here, not to you, certainly, if you've followed me this far. This is really my rational self preaching to my emotional self. I have an extreme natural tendency toward jealousy, one I fight with all of the time. A tendency joined by the hip to a bad habit of looking for my own value in my perception of the way other people do or do not value me. It suits my life and my belief system poorly, and it frustrates me.
And of course, this all gets me to wondering why the heck envy is green anyway. Green's a color for illness, and jealousy an illness of the heart perhaps. The Guardian collects an answer from Peter Brooke, of Kinmuck, Scotland, that I like: "The 'green sickness' (chlorosis - which gives the skin a greenish hue) was once supposed to afflict young women who longed for a partner. Shakespeare was probably alluding to this detail and made Othello see Desdemona as greenish through green eyes."
But to me, green is the color of Spring, the color of life, the color of abundance in the world. Indeed, the transformation from the isolation of envy to the joy of connectedness to the Earth is how Kermit consoles himself:
***
It's not easy bein' green.
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water, or stars in the sky.
But green's the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain, or tall like a tree.
***
May your lives be filled with all the love you could wish for.
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Re: Jealousy
Date: 2002-05-30 06:23 pm (UTC)