My brother Matt said something to me once which I know I will never forget.
"Dev," he said. "When you're lucky, you are the luckiest son of a bitch I know..."
"When you're unlucky," he continued. "I know it usually means I should be expecting a call telling me you've been hit by a car again."
Now for contextual reasons, the reason why he slapped the word again at the end of that sentence is because when I was in high school, I would walk there and back every day since I didn't own a car. The route I would take always took me across a major freeway that connected Portland to the Pacific coast, and because people were always trying to beat the lights, they seemed to do so at times when I was crossing the on and off-ramps. The result was me getting well acquainted with hood ornaments and windshields of various makes and models of cars.
*Editorial Note - While I am fortunate enough to not suffer anything worse than a broken ankle as a result of my attempts to play real-world Frogger, I did have one point where I came within six inches of being hit by a Hummer driven by the CEO of Nike, Phil Knight. I will concede, if ever I was going to take one for the proverbial team, that would've been it.
As I find this year coming to a close, I feel like I've been slammed by an 18-wheeler traveling at warp speed and honestly, I don't think I've found myself feeling so jealous of so many people who seem to be oblivious to just how good they have it at any other point of my life.
It's not something I'm unaccustomed to. Growing up in a family who didn't have much money, it became all too easy for me to envy my neighbors who had toys and games I wanted. When I became a teenager, I envied the kids who got cars for their sixteenth or eighteenth birthdays while I continued my daily hike every day.
The worst aspect of my jealous streak, though, developed when I started seeing people around me getting into relationships with each other and I always seemed to be the odd man out. Being the token third wheel gets really old after a while, and I sometimes feel sorry for the guys who dated the girls I liked. I'd do my best to put on a good front and not let it bother me, while simultaneously seething with such a potent mixture of jealousy and anger that I'd almost be waiting for any excuse to just unleash it all on them.
One of the many perks I had of being married and in a monogamous relationship for so long was I didn't have reason to be jealous of anyone anymore. I had my wife, and as all outward appearances indicated to me, we were happy. I didn't envy my friends who had kids or had a house, because I always figured we'd get there eventually. We'd have kids and get a house and for all intents and purposes, everything else I'd coveted from those around me would come in their own time.
Now that I've been on my own for a while, I've struggled a lot with not being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of unabashed jealousy I've accrued. I freely admit it's hard seeing friends continue to broadcast their triumphs, whether it's a new house, new car, new relationship, new vacation or whatever it may be, without getting those familiar pangs and the ever-burning question in my head.
Why the hell am I not good enough to get the same things?
I don't like being jealous of people. I really don't. I'd like to think that it's still possible for me to get to where I want to be and reach a more even plane with the people around me. The problem is that from my perspective, while everyone I know is coasting down the other side of the massive steep hill to get to where they are...
I'm still trying to figure out how to get up the damn thing, especially since somebody took the rope which made the climb that much easier with them on their way over the top.
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