Jealously and What I am Jealous Of

Now, I would really like a good job, a dog, a girlfriend/someday wife, and a baby (hopefully in that order, though if a girlfriend comes before a dog, that's fine); but when I see a person contentedly walking their dog, or a happy couple, or parents doting over their children, I am not jealous, but happy for them.

So what am I jealous of? Whether you know me or not, you may be able to tell from my posts I am a somewhat odd soul, here is further proof of that. When I go hiking, overlook a cliff and see birds lazily circling on the wind, I am jealous of them. When I look out of a window and see squirrels agilely chasing after one another, up and down a tree, I am jealous of them. When I see how gracefully a dolphin or seal cuts through the water and how long they can hold their breath, I am jealous of them. I know man, through his ingenuity, can soar even higher, climb even further, and stay underwater even longer but that is with the use of artifice and not entirely on our “own steam.”

You know, I say I'm odd to be jealous of those things, but I think others were, too. I think humans looked at the birds and longed for the freedom of the sky, so they strove to fly. I guess sailors saw how long whales went under, wondered what they saw, and determined to follow them. Someone looked at a lemur climbing up a rock face and said, I can do that too, so they developed spikes, harnesses, and ropes.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” but so is jealously, so is the desire for man to be able to do everything he sees the creatures around him doing. Jealously, rightly, has a negative connotation, so perhaps this is an unfair word to attach to the desire for humankind to physically better themselves, but I will leave it be. Perhaps this desire streams from God's command for man to “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Too bad we haven't been better stewards of our charge, I guess we're still learning how much influence we have over everything, that, through our actions and numbers we can alter the world and all that is in it.

In very many ways, humankind is “too big for our britches,” in some ways think we are gods, but in others we have always thought ourselves too small. We looked at our resources and thought they were inexhaustible, we looked at our oceans and thought they were too big for little old us to affect, and so on and so forth.