Jealousy -Green- Eyed Monster

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Green-Eyed Monster is an expression Shakespeare used in Othello for jealousy. Othello, dark-skinned, having married a woman of unparalleled beauty and nobility, always felt unworthy of her. He lacked self-esteem. His lack of self-esteem was further exploited by the villain, Iago, who insinuated that Desdemona (Othello's wife) was cheating on him and was unfaithful.

Iago would say:

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

the meat it feeds on;

This was an obvious goad to enrage Othello and make him more jealous so that he would do what he did. Othello's jealousy swelled so much and became so intensely malicious and powerful that it led him to murder his beloved wife.

To illustrate this point further I summarise here below TOI report dated 30th July 2019.

Times of India in its Mumbai edition of 30 July 2019 carried a report that an A-Class VIII girl student was reportedly sedated and sexuality violated for a period of 2 years on a government school campus in Sitapur district of UP. The alleged perpetrators involved in this obnoxious act are four cousins of the girl who stayed with her in joint family and a teacher the accomplice. The girl was very good at her studies. She always excelled and stood first in her class , The cousins who were not good at their studies and always flunked their classes got jealous of her and their resentment became so strong that they wanted to humiliate her and cut her to size.

It is a perfect example of a person being driven by Jealousy to such an extent that he would ensure the target of the jealousy is abused ,shamed and eliminated. And this is what the four cousins in the complicity of the teacher did with the girl. Abusers have been arrested but that does not take away the hurt inflicted.

What Othello and the four cousins did is the monstrous face of jealousy. They acted like a demon. This is what jealousy drives a man to.

Don't let this green-eyed monster take the reins. Don't let it overpower you. It will cripple you. It will destroy your personality. It will cloud your thinking. AND it will hurt and destroy your soul and make you do horrendous acts out of jealousy.

How devastating effect, the emotion jealousy can have on a jealous person is so beautifully expressed by Mr. Nadeem Farrukh a renowned Urdu poet in his following couplet

---Jis din meray Urooj Ki us ney khabar sunee--

--Us din sey us ka zehani tawazun bigad gaya-

A rough translation is as under

The day he came to know of my elevation /exaltation;

From the same day, he lost his mental balance.

So stay away from this soul poisoning emotion

Learning points

Curb your jealousy
Crush your negative thoughts that breed resentment
Jealousy is negative, jealousy is destructive, jealousy is demotivator, it is a killer monster
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little---Gore Vidal? this is jealousy
Every time a friend succeeds, I find out what skills he has that led him to achieve success ?I will try to acquire these skills? this is envy. Let envy become and remain a spur for excellence.