Why do we feel jealous?
Have you ever felt jealous of somebody? I believe the answer is yes. But have you ever wondered why we feel jealous? I looked it up in the Oxford dictionary and it explained that: “Jealous is feeling angry or unhappy because somebody you like or love is showing interest in somebody else”. I really like this definition and I think it is so true. We will get jealous not when we see somebody richer than us, smarter than us, or more beautiful than us but when we see the ones we love showing love to someone else.
Recently, I have watched a Chinese TV series named Shang Yang Fu (The Rebel Princess). It is one of the best Chinese TV series that I have seen in the past 2 years. The TV series brings me a lot of emotions and makes me think a lot about my life. One of the things that I wondered frequently afterward is the jealous feeling of humans. In the TV series, I am impressed with a male subordinate character. He is a very typical underdog character that we can see in any movie, a supporting role who always feels unconfident when standing next to the male lead, who has an unrequited love for the female lead, and who turns evil and dies because of that love. I don’t understand why but I always have a special sympathy for such a kind of character and this time I want to dig a little deeper into the reasons why.
First, everyone wants to be loved by the people we loved. We want to have love from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Obviously, the level demand of the love is different from person to person. Some need a bit. Some need a huge. Nevertheless, in general, we have our own size of a love bottle for ourselves and one of our missions in life is to make this bottle full. Some people are very lucky. They are born with so much love already as if they got three-quarters of the bottle so they will have less pressure to fulfill that one quarter left when they grow up. Otherwise, some others are born with very little or even an empty bottle of love so they have to work harder to fulfill their bottles. Of course, this mission is much more difficult. For those who have little or no love from the beginning, the way they look for love is more desperate. Let’s use the side character I mentioned above as a good example. His bottle is zero so he needs to find more love. Because he needs to find more love, he is less patient and more extreme. He is more afraid to lose love. It is this fear that makes him easier to lose himself to get the love he needs. Conversely, those who already have a great amount of love in advance are less pressured. If they are rejected by someone, they are easier to move on to the next one. That is a huge difference.
Second, the ones that lack love are more vulnerable and diffident. It is the root cause of their jealous feelings. Since being born with little love, they have questioned why they are not loved while the other children are. Being not good enough, being ugly, or being disobedient are the reasons they make up for their shortage of love. When they grow up, they will be more cautious in any kind of relationship and have less faith in finding true love. The circle is just kept repeating, making the situation worse and worse. On the other hand, those with much love capital will be more confident and open-minded to pursue love. They can stand up faster after failure and as a result, they will fill up their love bottle more quickly.
When I realize this ugly truth, I feel really bad for those children who have little love from their parents since I know that they have a worse beginning than the others. However, I believe that love is magical. Sometimes we only need one person to fill up our empty bottles. The moment we meet that person, we will know that we are perfect. Our body shapes are perfect. Our poor backgrounds are perfect. Our jokes are perfect. And we are perfect. Then, we will not feel jealous anymore as we know we are complete. I really hope that all of us will be lucky and patient enough to find out that person, the one who says: “I love you for who you are”.
