Today’s Provocative Question, Fandango asks:
Is jealousy purely a negative and potentially destructive emotion, or does jealousy have any value as a motivator to drive people to improve themselves?
Isn’t jealousy negative pretty much by definition? Here’s what the Cambridge English dictionary has to say:
a feeling of unhappiness and anger because someone has something or someone that you want.
Unhappy? Anger? That sounds pretty negative to me.
But I see what the question is saying. I think it is important to compare yourself, because it’s the only way you know you’re getting better. If you’re Mo Farah, it might be important to compare yourself against others, so you can come away with the gold medal, but for most of us, we’re just happy to compare ourselves against ourselves.
When I was cycling, I used to do this. I’d record my time over a course and hey, a year later I found I’d rode it faster. If we’re trying to lose weight, we’ll weigh ourselves from time to time, just to make sure we’re going in the right direction…
Having had the stroke, my walking was slow and I got out of breath quickly. Still do, but I’ve learnede to cope with it better. But one of my favourites was to walk from home to the bus stop – a set “course” (I remember measuring it once but I’m buggered if I can remember what it is – about half a mile, I think). I timed myself on my phone every year or so. Just to see that timegoing down. Exactly what I used to do when I cycled – it’s amazing how much being a cyclist has helped me recover from this. But, how long it would take Mo Farah to cover that distance – who cares?
Your right that though jealousy is mostly a negative emotion, it has its uses too.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jealousy can be quite subtle. You may not even want something until your neighbour, friend, colleague, class mate gets a new car, puppy, goes on holiday some where exotic or starts going out with that chap you hadn’t really noticed before…
LikeLiked by 2 people
true
LikeLiked by 1 person
And Mo Farah might need stabilisers on his bike Pete!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did you write this last year? You title says “5 January 2020.” If you wrote this a year ago, I am jealous of your prescience. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
d’oh, forgot to change the year!
LikeLiked by 1 person
d’oh, forgot to change the year! Bet no-one else noticed 🤣
LikeLiked by 1 person
I noticed the URL 🙂 I got confused a bit, I forgot it’s 2021 😀
I felt jealous in 2020. I hate it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re just living in the past 🤣
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I think about jealousy I associate it more to the emotional fear rather than to what others have. In the sense that if you care about someone, for example, it may happen that you become jealous. Of course it must not be exhaggerated. If it’s something persisting, then I think it is quite a negative feeling.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a very good point.
LikeLiked by 1 person