The Most Deadly Disease
I’ve been
holding back from sharing this, but now I think I’m ready. I hope you are,
because the only way to beat this thing is with your help.
The word’s worst disease is right up
there with hatred, cancer and HIV/AIDS. In starts in your head and then gets in
the bloodstream and affects your heart.
A person can be brain dead and still live,
but what kills the heart kills the body as well.
I’ll get to it, so you can get to work---on
yourself. The thing that’s killing us more rapidly than anything else is a
disease known as jealousy.
Our envy and jealousy make us spend
more, bully, hate, envy our neighbor, shut down creativity and congress.
Jealousy keeps us from seeing our own
unique abilities and strengths. What I find most amazing is the trend to be
jealous of our own former self.
We envy the
person we were when we were younger, thinner or stronger. We envy our old self;
the one we despised so much that we created the one we are now.
Our jealousy
of self becomes jealously of family and friends, neighbors and colleagues and eventually
we become jealous of that “other”---anyone we think is separate from our self.
Jealousy is
as old as Cain and Able and unless we take a good look at our own stuff, it will
be around until, as my mom would say, “Kingdom come.”
Today and
every one that follows, take a good look at your own thoughts. Jealousy is
never obvious to the diseased. It creeps up on you in the form of “you make me
sick.”
In fact, we
are making our own selves sick when we envy the achievements, station, intelligence,
looks or toys of another.
I have good news; gratitude is the
cure. Be grateful for who you are and what you have right now. Be grateful for
your children and don’t compare them to someone else’s. Give thanks for your
loved ones and appreciate them for who they are and why you chose them.
Love and
give thanks for your family, friends, job and the co-workers who come with it. Give
thanks for your neighborhood, school and country.
Remember,
gratitude has nothing to do with pride. Gratitude is the simple and peaceful appreciation
that “this is enough.” Deal with tomorrow when it comes and be grateful for who
you are today.
Jealousy is
taking out good people, but it does so slowly; so slow that we don’t even know
what’s killing us.
Help us end world jealousy by being
more grateful, authentic, unique and appreciative today.
Be you, be well, be
whole.
Bertice Berry, PhD.
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