At the last article “Jealousy 1”, we tackled negative feelings of jealousy and I depicted its reasons and how it is considered a true catastrophe as if dominated one’s heart would fill it with what negatively influences one’s behavior and misleads their vision of the facts.
Another thing is that jealousy hinders man from making a progress at his work and achieving his goals as he becomes preoccupied with others, forgetting about his mission and his life aspirations. When one’s eyes are not preoccupied with the way he wishes to follow, he will focus only on others and their achievements. As At this moment, he is distracted from focusing on his goals and may turn away from them completely once he gives in to the feeling of jealousy and frustration generated by it. Dear, you are living life for a mission; do not be preoccupied with people or the glamour way you come across that stole your focus on your goals.
Those who wish to be successful will have to set their goals before their own eyes, moving towards fulfilling them with all honesty without slowing down, laziness or despair. This man who is preoccupied with taking positive steps and heading to climb the peaks and mountains will find no place in his heart or his thoughts for those negative things and he will have no time for inquiring about what others own; he is concerned with assessing his performance and methods, developing himself and gaining more skills.
Moreover, jealousy means the loss of one’s happiness: jealousy is a kind of lack of appreciation of the potentials God has given a person in order to make achievements, as it a concentration on what others have and what he lacks. We can now imagine the feelings of someone who does not realize his strong points and focuses only on what others have. One of the main reasons of human happiness is having true faith in the talents and gifts he owns and can utilize along his life journey. For God, blessed be His name, has created us to enjoy deep and meaningful life for which He granted us numerous and diverse gifts and talents.
But our talents are not the same nor do we have identical characters, no matter how close or similar they seem to be; but there is always a difference. The aim of this diversity is to cooperate and collaborate to work with one another. Therefore, every person must appreciate and invest his talents in the best possible way.
Let us remember those words: Do not envy people for their blessings, you do not know from what God deprived them! When you live your life, not the life of others, you will know the meaning of happiness, and you will find that jealousy is meaningless. One day, someone told me: I did not know the meaning of happiness or comfort in my life. Since my childhood, which was crowded with five brothers, sisters and parents who did not find time to work for their children, I did not actually do one action without comparing myself to others. I did not learn to look at what I had. I met someone who taught me how to consider myself first, my advantages and disadvantages and see into how I would polish my strong points and get rid of the weak ones.
Since then, I have not had time to look at what others have. Happiness and comfort have filled my life.
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural center
