The only feeling I haven’t felt yet: Jealousy
People talk and write about jealousy a lot. Even I have seen people getting jealous of people, love, care, money, and everything else. However, this feeling is always been an alien feeling for me. I believe my mother is the reason behind it. Her thought patterns regarding other people’s prosperity and hardships made us siblings very kind and generous towards others.
Me and my siblings raised in a middle-class agriculture-based family in the rural parts of India. One thing I love about my parents is that they neither compared us to the other kids during our childhood nor they are comparing us now to other adults. They provided us with a good education but never forced us to study or get good marks. They never asked about our grades, even they never showed any expression if any of us ever achieved anything. I consider it as their humbleness, they never made us feel any pride. I believe they kept us very grounded.
It is this habit of theirs, we never give much thought to other kids’ achievements. We never had to compete with anyone for anything. It is because we were never jealous of other people’s success. People get jealous of their competition. We never had any competition.
It does not mean that we were careless about our goals. All of us were quite good at academics. And we are doing good or equal to our peers.
My mother always has a good thing to say about everything. Whenever I and my siblings tries to laugh at another person, she says, “No. This is bad. God makes everyone different. Laughing is the worst thing you can do to make another person feel bad”
Whenever we try to boast, her words are always the same, “Never spit upwards, it will fall on your face.”
Whenever we try to judge, she will be like, “It’s his or her life. Why are you bothering.”
If we go to relatives richer than us, she says, “I pray to God, that they will always stay like this.”
If we go to relatives poorer than us, she says, “God give him whatever he or she desires.”
Because of all these sayings, we never know what jealousy is. She never let us feel it. If we see people better than us we are happy for them. We are like they deserve every bit of it. We are kind and generous towards other people in need. We help each other selflessly. We are more connected with each other than any other family. There is so much love between us siblings, that I feel blessed every day for having such a nice family and siblings.
We motivate each other and find good things to do for each other.
