I think you're so right about what real love is. The media always portrays it as having something to do with desire or possession. I read in Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance that love is about paying close attention, and in my mind, I added, "and love is about service." Maybe it makes sense to just say it's about giving, and I would even say it's about the desire to give.
I never could wrap my head around the idea of being jealous of people on social media. For some reason, it just doesn't compute for me. It makes me happy to see people happy, whether it's with their kids or pets or on vacation.
Whether they're doing something has no impact on whether I can or can't do the same thing, so the connection just isn't there for me. For the past several years, I haven't been able to do much traveling because of Zophia being ill, then Basil being ill, then Dylan being ill. We always had a cat that needed daily care. I was upset about the lack of travel, but it never bothered me to see anyone else travel.
One time out of the blue, my therapist asked, "You don't do much comparison, do you?" I hadn't really thought about it much before then, but I guess I don't. I've seen myself as too much of an outsider for too long to compare myself to other people. Growing up, no one cared what I did. It never mattered how good I was at something or how smart I was. I was always still the lowest on the totem pole--the weird kid with no friends and last to be picked for anything. If life is a competition, I lost a long time ago.
Sometimes, I get the feeling from some people, especially old friends, not you, but other people, that they begrudge me whatever happiness I manage to scrape out of this world. It boggles my mind.
I guess they don't know about the reason I've moved around so much; I was forced out of my childhood home because we were about to be put on the streets of LA. We were sent to strangers in Wisconsin because we had no other family. By the time I was in high school, I no longer had ties to Wisconsin because my extended family had blown apart from various tragedies (dead grandmother, dead aunt, and dead uncle, another uncle in prison, and my closest cousin gone, all within a few years).
My dad was a drug addict. My mom was schizophrenic. And, people ask me, "Where did you get the courage to move around so much?" I got it because it would've taken more courage to stay. I move around to various places because I haven't had a home since the morning when was 11 years old, and my dad shook me awake, and said, "Pack. You're going to Wisconsin."
So, maybe that's why I don't bother with comparisons. It's not a personal choice, so I guess it's not a personal choice for anyone else, either. We feel what we feel. We're better off acknowledging our feelings than ignoring them, but I think that comparison kills kindness. It turns life into a competition and makes us forget that everyone struggles.
However, when my therapist asked me about comparison that day, I did say, "I'm only ever jealous of things related to writing and publishing. The times I do experience jealousy, I just recognize that I'm envious, and I kind of enjoy it. I find it to be a positive experience because envy shows us what we really want. It shows us our own priorities."
Envy led you to start a new project that will probably have a really positive impact on people's lives and the environment. So, in the end, all those travel pictures that made you jealous were a good thing, and the envy you experienced was a good thing. I wish you the best of luck with it. If you ever need any help, like if you want help creating a website or something, I'm happy to do it.
I think you're so right about what real love is. The media always portrays it as having something to do with desire or possession. I read in Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance that love is about paying close attention, and in my mind, I added, "and love is about service." Maybe it makes sense to just say it's about giving, and I would even say it's about the desire to give.
I never could wrap my head around the idea of being jealous of people on social media. For some reason, it just doesn't compute for me. It makes me happy to see people happy, whether it's with their kids or pets or on vacation.
Whether they're doing something has no impact on whether I can or can't do the same thing, so the connection just isn't there for me. For the past several years, I haven't been able to do much traveling because of Zophia being ill, then Basil being ill, then Dylan being ill. We always had a cat that needed daily care. I was upset about the lack of travel, but it never bothered me to see anyone else travel.
One time out of the blue, my therapist asked, "You don't do much comparison, do you?" I hadn't really thought about it much before then, but I guess I don't. I've seen myself as too much of an outsider for too long to compare myself to other people. Growing up, no one cared what I did. It never mattered how good I was at something or how smart I was. I was always still the lowest on the totem pole--the weird kid with no friends and last to be picked for anything. If life is a competition, I lost a long time ago.
Sometimes, I get the feeling from some people, especially old friends, not you, but other people, that they begrudge me whatever happiness I manage to scrape out of this world. It boggles my mind.
I guess they don't know about the reason I've moved around so much; I was forced out of my childhood home because we were about to be put on the streets of LA. We were sent to strangers in Wisconsin because we had no other family. By the time I was in high school, I no longer had ties to Wisconsin because my extended family had blown apart from various tragedies (dead grandmother, dead aunt, and dead uncle, another uncle in prison, and my closest cousin gone, all within a few years).
My dad was a drug addict. My mom was schizophrenic. And, people ask me, "Where did you get the courage to move around so much?" I got it because it would've taken more courage to stay. I move around to various places because I haven't had a home since the morning when was 11 years old, and my dad shook me awake, and said, "Pack. You're going to Wisconsin."
So, maybe that's why I don't bother with comparisons. It's not a personal choice, so I guess it's not a personal choice for anyone else, either. We feel what we feel. We're better off acknowledging our feelings than ignoring them, but I think that comparison kills kindness. It turns life into a competition and makes us forget that everyone struggles.
However, when my therapist asked me about comparison that day, I did say, "I'm only ever jealous of things related to writing and publishing. The times I do experience jealousy, I just recognize that I'm envious, and I kind of enjoy it. I find it to be a positive experience because envy shows us what we really want. It shows us our own priorities."
Envy led you to start a new project that will probably have a really positive impact on people's lives and the environment. So, in the end, all those travel pictures that made you jealous were a good thing, and the envy you experienced was a good thing. I wish you the best of luck with it. If you ever need any help, like if you want help creating a website or something, I'm happy to do it.