Jealousy, like kindness (as I mentioned earlier), is an emotion which I have trouble feeling. I just don't feel the urge to become miserable if someone else has more money, or is better looking, or perhaps even has more talent than I do. I may like to be more like them, but I don't grudge them what they have.
However, sometimes, just sometimes, I do feel pangs of discomfort when I contemplate genius of the order of, say, Beethoven. Or Dali. Or Wilde. Or Einstein. It's not jealousy, at least not as I understand it. After all, they wrote and composed and painted for my pleasure. They created wealth, and then, they just gave it to me. No, I don't grudge them their genius, I am grateful to them for using their talents to give me treasures. But every so often I do think to myself, "What else did they see, or hear, or think up !?! Maybe there was a tenth symphony that Beethoven heard all by himself on the inside of his head. Maybe he died before getting it out - or maybe he did not want to soil it by bringing it forth into this sullied world. Ditto Dali. Ditto Wilde and Einstein and all the other greats who have and will grace this earth. There must have been whole ocean floors of unlocked treasures in those eggheads which will, forevermore be sealed from the rest of us."
Granted, I don't say this to myself in quite the melodramatic way in which I have written it here, but that is more or less what crosses my mind. Like I said, it's not jealousy. But what is that feeling. Yearning, I suppose !?!
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