TheSkaFish said:I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.
Aisha said:All you are seeing when you envy someone is the surface. Everyone you know is going through some sort of a struggle, or will do at some point. How they deal with their demons will be different from how you would. Walk a mile, as they say.
If it's one aspect like a material possession or a skill or relationships etc, it would do no harm to aspire to it. Just take the other person out of the equation. The envy is there because they have something you want. Focus on what it is you want and not on them.
VanillaCreme said:TheSkaFish said:I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.
Do you still collect them?
TheSkaFish said:VanillaCreme said:TheSkaFish said:I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.
Do you still collect them?
Yeah, as a matter of fact I do! I still have the ones I had as a kid. It fell off the radar for a while, but I happened to see some of the newer ones they were making these days, and I was impressed with the level of detail they have now. They were already moving in that direction when my childhood was winding down, but they have only kept improving, with more and more accurate representations of actual cars. So, with that, I resumed collecting them again. The first two I got were a green '67 Shelby G.T.500 and an orange '71 Dodge Challenger R/T. As you might guess, I especially like the muscle cars, classic and new. And I have a soft spot for the creature cars. I've always thought they were interesting
TheSkaFish said:Anyway. I wanted to answer your question but didn't mean to get this too far off track. The more I thought about the topic of jealousy, the more I thought to myself that it wasn't so much even the cars that I was jealous of as I was the idea that usually, someone who owns a car like that has their life figured out. That's what I truly envy. They know what direction they want to take their life in, and are well on their way to somewhere. Of course, it is possible that they really don't and are in debt up to their eyeballs, which I would not be jealous of at all. But I don't think that's the case for most of them. I think most of them have a solid handle on their skills, finances, personality, and their identity.
Vanilla is completely right. People wrap too much of their or other people's sense of worth in money or objects. The fact is that most of the wealthy were raised in wealthy families. Many of them having numerous personal problems. Even the ones who so-called "earned" their wealth from relatively nothing still have tons of personal problems.VanillaCreme said:I don't think having any vehicle means someone has their life in order. In fact, many sports cars get the bad rap for belonging to someone who's going through a mid-life crisis. So, I wouldn't exactly associate cars with that. Anyone can have or own a car. Or have multiple cars. And still be in debt, still have turmoil, and have a rough future ahead of them.
Despicable Me said:Anyway, my point is you shouldn't look at wealth and objects as having everything together. In many cases these people are just trying to compensate for their issues in a way that is destructive, either to themselves or to everyone around them.
As Vanilla noted, it can be as simple as just having a mid-life crisis. Sometimes those fancy new cars hurt an entire family's budget due to only one person's ridiculous decision-making. Those kinds of things have been known to ruin good marriages, as well.
Money is clearly not everything.
Despicable Me said:Vanilla is completely right. People wrap too much of their or other people's sense of worth in money or objects.
.....
Some people might look at that and think "Oh I wish I could have that", but then if you really look at his life, you know he's just doing that to cover up feelings of inadequacy. He now has a ton of money and attention he may not even feel he deserves, and how is he to know who to trust among his friends? Who are real and there for him and who just want some of his money or a good time?
Despicable Me said:Anyway, my point is you shouldn't look at wealth and objects as having everything together. In many cases these people are just trying to compensate for their issues in a way that is destructive, either to themselves or to everyone around them.
As Vanilla noted, it can be as simple as just having a mid-life crisis. Sometimes those fancy new cars hurt an entire family's budget due to only one person's ridiculous decision-making. Those kinds of things have been known to ruin good marriages, as well.
Money is clearly not everything.
VanillaCreme said:Exactly. Material wealth and property don't make a person. Their actions, their deeds, and their will make them. I know that life happens and people change, but sometimes they change regardless of having a seemingly stable life. Truth is, no one knows what happens behind someone's closed door. Sure, that person might have a nice house, a couple of nice cars, and whatever else, but that doesn't mean they're happy with who they are or what they do. Many people just go through the motions of life.
VanillaCreme said:Ska, perhaps because you want it to be that way, you see it that way. But you have a car (I think - correct me if I'm wrong), and you still aren't exactly happy with where you are in life. So, that should tell you right there... It's not all it's cracked up to be sometimes.
I'm not at all a jealous or envious person, but this hate is really what drives me now. It's one of the only things I ever think about anymore. How we are basically treated like the dogs of society and we're just being thrown scraps from people who did absolutely nothing to earn their place. They were simply born there. And I even know in some cases, even I have been privileged and gotten things I did not deserve. But that's simply how the world works, there is no justice here and there is absolutely no equality. Society prevents these things, destroys them.Xpendable said:In my experience, I always resented not being able to have things that would make me better in what interest me. I study music and I'm the only one in my class who has to work to pay the bills. Others can go skiing every weekend and could afford various instruments while growing up, resulting in them being able to play different things. Their parents pay for the career, their stuff and even their rent. So while their are partying on saturday night, I'm stuck in the stand of a condo, opening the door for other people that can have everything they want. I play the keyboard because we couldn't afford anything else. No guitar, no drums, no bass. Is not that I resent the people itself, it's not their fault. But it irks me that I have to work so hard just to cover my basic subsistence, while others spend like nothing. The only thing that comforts me is that I'm the first of the class, and is weird to think that probably others envy me by that. The difference is that it took me a lot of work to be the best, while I know they didn't work for the money they got.
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