Don’t Feed Jealousy After Midnight
What is the dominant emotion in your life right now? How can you use this emotion to improve your life?
Jealousy is not an emotion in and of itself. As Psychology Today describes it:
Jealousy is a complex emotion that encompasses feelings ranging from suspicion to rage to fear to humiliation.
I’ve caught this little Gremlin — Jealousy — feeding on a wide variety of experiences in my life and in the lives of those close to me, leaving behind a trail of vastly different emotions:
- When I was 6 years old, I was angry that the kid I met in the playground played sports too. I had to prove to him that I was stronger than him.
- When I was 9 and immigrated to a different country, I was sad that I was the only child who couldn’t speak English.
- When I was 13, my best friend was amused by the idea of becoming more popular than they and I were. They needed to get with the cool clique.
- When I was 15, I was excited by the idea of hanging out with the druggie clique that was cooler and older than me. I started sharing drugs with them.
- When I was 19, my first love cheated on me with someone else. I was humiliated and infuriated.
- When I was 23, my second love resented the fact that they helped me with my job search and I made good money while they were still in school and unemployed. They were also suspicious of me and thought that I was cheating.
These emotions fed the Gremlin after midnight. In almost every case, the Gremlin had damaged something in its wake:
- To prove the other kid I was stronger than when I was 6, I threw a brick in the playground and got in trouble.
- My best friend when I was 13 decided to say bad things behind my back and laugh about me. It traumatized me, and surprisingly their plan to end up with the cool clique worked.
- When, at 15, I started sharing drugs with the druggie clique, I ended up being detained by the police. This had me suspended from school, broke my parents' heart, and nearly got me a criminal record. It also sent me down a road towards harder drugs.
- After my first love cheated on me when I was 19, the humiliation lingered for a long time and invalidated the good memories we had.
- The resentment and suspicion that my second love experienced would lead to worse and worse fights. Eventually, a very minor argument broke the camel’s back.
But the Gremlin helped me when I didn’t feed it after midnight. If you recall the second instance, as a 9-year-old immigrant, jealousy motivated me to learn English at an astonishing rate. Even though it is my third language, I feel as though I am a native speaker.
When is Midnight?
At dawn, Jealousy the Gremlin, like most diurnal animals, emerges from its slumber to find something to feed on, sniffing around one’s daily experiences and looking for feeding opportunities. Its favorite experiences to gnaw on include romantic relationships, work and school, dispositions with family and extended family members, and even interactions with strangers.
As the sun makes its way throughout noon, Jealousy’s day becomes hotter. Different emotions emerge and get to know each other like flavors in a hearty stew. Jealousy eventually finds an experience paired with an evoked emotion. It stalks its prey, seeing which direction it is turning in, hoping that it may lead it into the prey’s nest and uncover more emotions and more experiences.
Nearing dusk, Jealousy always succeeds in finding its meal. Even if we thought that it sat today out, it didn’t. Sometimes it is not fed toxic emotions and instead has a much healthier meal consisting of envy that has been successfully directed inwards and turned into yearning for success and personal growth. Regardless, Jealousy always eats.
And sometimes it finds the nest of its prey. Not by chance, of course. But if our experience has been riddled with anger, resentment, insecurity, and emotions alike, we have given Jealousy not only a trail of blood but also an enormous increase in appetite.
It stalks the nest around midnight, stretching its day unnaturally past its time for slumber. Its appetite is immense, and Jealousy exposes its sharp canine-like teeth and breathes its foul breath, ready to bite. It tears violently through its prey with its jaw. And not only the prey but also every other experience and emotion in the nest it infiltrated.
Flesh. Blood. Jealousy is worse than a bear or a wolf. Jealousy is the Gremlin of the human condition. It moves and feeds like a vicious animal, but has the appetite and capacity to consume all of the crazy ideas and emotions a human has to offer.
Keeping a Gremlin
Like in the 1984 Comedy Horror Film, Gremlins can be kept as long as one follows three rules. With jealousy, I found that those rules are:
- Recognize jealousy when it starts sniffing around in your life.
- Know that jealousy is part of you. But avoid feeding it toxic emotions and ideas and instead direct it towards the yearning for personal growth.
- Never, under any circumstances, feed jealousy after midnight. If you’ve led jealousy to the nest, chase it out!
Indeed, jealousy can be a valuable ally if we follow the second rule successfully. It’s the reason why some people are able to direct jealousy and turn it into a yearning for personal growth.
A good example of this is avoiding resentment of loved ones or strangers should they have something you desire. If one stops to assess what it is they desire and whether or not it is truly valuable to them, they may dismiss jealousy right then and there. If there is indeed something of true value, one should assess what it takes to achieve the same. They will soon uncover the hard work they’ll need to put in and respect, rather than resent, the individual who has completed that path. They will embark on that journey and ultimately better themselves. Jealousy is still a motivator, but in this form, it is a healthy emotion.
I deal with jealousy every day. It tries to feed on memories of my ex and thoughts of them being with someone else, and tries to present me with hope that they will never find someone else. It tries to feed on experiences with those who had started budgeting money earlier than me and presents me with the painful thought that I could have been so much more at this point in my life. And jealousy is not going away. I’m just going to put this little Gremlin on a leash and have it lead me towards personal growth.
I’m never going to feed it after midnight again.
