Jealousy

Well, folks this is the morning topic inside of our brain.... Jea LOUSY.  Never noticed before that the word has lousy in it.  Should not surprise me at all.

What is this thing jealousy?  Why is it even here on this planet?  It is one emotion that I simply do not get and what has brought it up today is a situation between my neighbors which FINALLY is understood.  Yeah I'm a little dense with things that are not a part of my own personal world.

My neighbors are fighting and we just could not understand why.  More importantly the neighbors that are being fought with can not understand so is it any wonder that our brain worked on it last night while shut down? 

We live in a duplex as do our neighbors next door.  On one side of their duplex is a family of 6.  This family is happy, very demonstrative, always ready to help (anyone), very generous of all that they have, nice cars, they pay cash for everything and shop thrifty to be able to do so but even shopping thrifty they always have everything they need and more.  This family often shares whatever they have to give but it is with an open smile and every indication that this is something they love to do.  This family often will go to court with their friends (being immigrants as are their friends somethings are just not understood until too late), they go to Doctors appointments, visit friends in the hospital, their children are well mannered and while we are certain they have problems they do not wear those problems on their sleeves or make them anyone elses responsibility.  Their neighbor in the next duplex is very angry with them right now and has chosen (in our way of thinking) a silly thing to be angry about BUT the bottom line is that he feels disrespected.  This neighbor is divorced, lives alone, has problems keeping his rent and monthly bills paid, has been fighting over custody of his only child for several years now (recently losing the joint custody and now has structured), does not have a car (but is very physically fit and even BUFF because of it and going to the gym several times a week) which he says is a choice, and seems quite angry.  They both (both families) are wonderful people and we enjoy each of them immensely.  They each are quite different yet quite wonderful and we love both families equally. 

The silly thing that has become the "battle ground" is the single neighbors garage.  Again he has no car BUT this really does not matter as it is HIS garage and he pays a portion of his rent each month for it.  Sounds simple and should be.  The Family somehow decided that because their neighbor was not using his garage, they were welcome to it and began treating it as if it were their own.  This has NOT been pretty with the family not able to understand what the problem is and the single man quite frustrated at trying to get the understanding across which FINALLY ended in an emotional explosion from the Single neighbor.  This explosion has turned into ground zero to the point of one of the families friends coming over and parking their car (unknown to the family) blocking this empty garage with no car to go into it and the single man exploding all over the Family man (verbally and very loudly) after breaking into this car (rather than coming to any of us to find who owned it) so he could take it out of park and MOVE it out from in front of his garage.  I went and bought a no parking sign and put it on that garage so now everyone knows not to park in front of it. 

For several weeks now, I've been trying to figure out what is REALLY going on inside of these heads.  It is not a matter of simple disrespect as the single man has determined is the problem.  There was no problem while he had joint custody of his child AND the Family provided free babysitting all summers while the single man worked.  In fact after the first explosion the single man told me (this was in the spring) that he needed to be nice because he needed a free babysitter.  Sigh.... Well, after exploding all over the Family the first time the free babysitting came to a stop. 

The Family's Wife (and a friend as they all are our friends including the single man) is quite hurt, confused, angry and well again confused.  She keeps asking me what she did wrong?  She keeps asking me if she is wrong?  I just keep saying, "he is very angry over something right now".  She does not understand why talking together would not have achieved a better result than the almost going to blows that happened a couple of weeks ago.  There is no way to "fix" this or there is no way I can "fix" this so we just continue letting each vent without taking sides. 

What does this have to do with jealousy?  Well.... what I believe has happened is that the Single man is jealous over the relationship and family life of the Family (even though they do not conduct their family in the way he would).  I believe that jealousy is at the root of this issue.  I believe that it is more acceptable to say that he was disrespected by them than to say that he is jealous of them.  It is very sad for me to watch.

While growing up, this thing called jealousy has been a thorn in my own side.  This is already long enough so not going to go into it except to say that it is something that I do not understand.  We each are created with the same number of hours in each day.  We each are given choices at every moment of every day to spend however we choose to spend that choice.  We each choose how we will feel at any given moment OR we choose to feel something different.  Jealousy is something that I do not understand at all because every one of us has the same opportunities as the next.  If we see something that another is experiencing that we, ourselves, wish to experience then it is most often available to us.  We might need to go back to school or study harder or take a second job or any number of costs for that experience but why be jealous when it is there for the taking if we want it?

Suppose, we will think about this some today and try to figure it out.  Honestly... we think it is just silly.