Jealousy is a word that is used with ease. But often times it’s misused. The person says the word ‘jealous’ but what they actually mean is ‘envy’. Here is how I see the difference. Jealousy is when you don’t want someone else to have what you have (or had). Envy is when you want what someone else has.
For example, if your neighbor has a new car and you wish you had it. You are envious, not jealous. But if your neighbor steals your husband and you wish you still had him. You are jealous, not envious.
Love and Hate
The reason you are jealous in that situation is because you still love your husband (in spite of him being so stupid as to leave you). You hate him for leaving, you hate her for stealing him away but you still love him and want him back. That is why you are jealous, because you feel both things at the same time. If you simply hated them both you wouldn’t be jealous. You would be happy to get rid of the jerk. If you only felt love for him you wouldn’t be jealous, you might feel sorry for him, or maybe hopeful he has a good life, but wouldn’t want him back and you wouldn’t hate that your neighbor stole him.
A few weeks ago, when I was on hiatus from my part-time job as a running coach, I took advantage of a few free Thursday nights to go to a figure drawing session at Philbrook Museum of Art. It was the first time I had ever photographed myself drawing like this and it was very eye opening to look back and watch my own process. I recommend it to anyone doing creative work.
10 minute pose in 37 seconds
This is a contour drawing, where you are finding definition of form via the contour lines of the figure. I have often been asked over the decades about being distracted while drawing the nude due to the arousing nature of staring at a naked person. The truth is, which I think you can see in these time-lapse photos, the process is incredibly focused, with 100% of one’s mind and body working to see and translate the scene onto paper. What I have always told my students, whether as a formal college instructor or just talking to people asking questions about art, is that drawing is irreducibly only one thing. It’s marks on a piece of paper. When I draw, my focus is on making an interesting set of marks on a piece of paper.
10 minute pose in 23 seconds
This is what I call a shape drawing, where I focused first on defining the individual shapes that then end up forming the figure’s overall shape. Only after I got those shapes in place did I start to define the figure with more shading and line.
10 minute pose in 37 seconds
This is another contour line drawing. It’s done in blue colored pencil. Why? I don’t know, just wanted to try it is all. One of the big challenges of drawing a figure or scene is organizing the space in your head before you start to draw. Making sure she was going to fit in other words. That starts at the very beginning of the drawing because if you get that first element proportioned wrong, your mistakes will multiply and you will end up with the figure not being composed as you would like.
After WWII the GIs came home and started families. The US exploded in production and manufacturing, construction, innovation, and standard of living. The depression was over, the war was over. Deprivation was behind them. Now they could have nice things, go nice places on nice roads. All of which was great. But that lead to a desire to not stand out, unless it was to stand out as the best and the brightest. But certainly not to stand out as odd or eccentric.
But the truth was many of those people were faking it. They didn’t really live these great lives full of fashion and money and grace and charm. They looked like they did, but not inside. Their outsides said one thing and their insides said another. Maybe the outside said dutiful housewife, but the inside said thwarted creative. Maybe the outside said successful businessman but the inside said thwarted outdoorsman. The point isn’t about the specifics though, it’s about leading an disingenuous life. It’s about not having who you present yourself to be matching who you really are.
Thank a Hippie
And so the people who saw this first hand, saw the hypocrisy and the pain it caused, who saw the thwarted lives, who saw the waste of trying to fit in, rebelled against it. Those people were the children of those adults trying to fit in. they became the beatniks, the hippies, the yippies (look it up) the flower children, the radicals. They became the ones promoting love, peace, creativity, freedom. They were the ones that said you could be who you want to be, not who you think others want you to be.
Even though we are 40-50 years removed from that era, if you feel that you are genuinely who you want to be, you have a hippie to thank for it. Maybe not directly, but in our modern world, it started with them. And if you don’t feel you are who you want to be, if you feel you are putting on a facade that isn’t really you, then take a lesson from the hippies and take a small step out into the unknown and see if you can’t do it too. You can you know.
Buy the original | Buy a print | matte and frame available
What do I mean by Culture?
I mean a society’s pursuit, desire, and support for a high level of creative expression in all arenas of society. What I don’t mean is an exclusionary or elite culture that feels itself to be superior or better than another one.
Why do I believe this high level of culture means less anger and violence? Because a high culture is one a society is proud of and invested in. That means they don’t want it destroyed. They don’t want it diminished. They don’t want it to disappear. They have created something that brings joy, interest, wonder, humor, fun, discovery. Something that makes one think and allows for a thinking response. They learn and grow from it. In other words, they love it.
I do not believe we, as an overall society, have a culture like that at this time.
Why not?
Well, it’s like the very true variation on the old quote. “Grass is always greener…where you water it.” The truth is we ourselves are responsible for the cultural grass being dry and dead. How so?
We contribute to it by not buying real art from real artists.
We contribute to it when we are more interested in judging creative expression than we are in understanding it.
We contribute to it by not speaking up when ugly buildings are built and when streets are filled with chain store after chain restaurant.
We contribute to it by not caring or being involved in city and town planning.
We contribute to it when we agree to the cutting of arts budgets from public schools.
We contribute to it by watching violence and mayhem as entertainment again and again and again.
We contribute to it by decrying any use of public funds for creative endeavors.
We contribute to it by not reading.
We contribute to it by not being interested in other cultures.
In other words, to use a variation on another famous quote, “For culture to disappear, all it takes is for good people to do nothing.”
Some of the saddest reports I read in the newspaper each day (yep, I read the paper) are the ones about a mother and father being arrested for child neglect. They break my heart just as much as some much more violent reports. Why is that?
Big Hate –
We often see hate on display these days in terrorist attacks, violent protests, angry authority figures, politics and murder. You may even have hate spewed at you personally once in a while. Hate is not that hard to spot, is it.
Small Hate –
But hate isn’t just the loud mouth, the siren, the volcano. It’s also the indifference of one group for another in pain. It’s the neglect a society shows towards the weakest or most vulnerable. It’s the irresponsible parent who would rather fulfill their own addictions and desires than take care of their child’s needs.
Tragic –
But what is it they hate exactly? Do they hate the child? I think they hate not being able to indulge. They can’t be who they want to be with a child alongside them. And that leads to resentment and hatred for their child. Can you think of anything more emotionally tragic than that for a child? I can’t. That parent may say they don’t want to hurt their child and so they don’t actively show hate towards them. But their ignoring of their needs, their purposeful lack of attention to their wants, is hate nonetheless.
Every Day –
Love isn’t about extravagant birthday celebrations and big vacations. It’s not about giving the best of everything to your child. It’s about paying attention to them. It’s about turning away from what you want and need and paying attention to what they want and need.
I drew this drawing of the crowd with two police officers representing love and hate on the morning of the Dallas protest, before the police officers were killed and wounded. I was going to post it the next morning but felt it would be insensitive to do so. It was now an incomplete statement.
So over the next few days I drew this one as a companion piece. It shows the opposite scene. Not cops in charge, but the crowd. The crowd has the power of love and hate just as much as the cops do.
Every Day
We as people must always decide, every day, whether we are going to act and react with love or hate. When violence happens to someone, especially someone you don’t know and might be scared of, or antagonistic towards, are you looking for a reason to not care? That means your heart is moving towards hate. It is hardening. You are telling it that those people don’t care. That they deserved it.
Only one person in the past week has deserved anything close to the fate of death, and that was the killer of the 5 police officers. But even then, you don’t have to say or feel it with hate. You can say it sadness that his life went so terribly awry, you can feel it with love and compassion for the families left behind.
Part of the Problem
The other 16 people? They didn’t deserve to be wounded or die. If your political position is such that you are hating one of these people; the cops who shot Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile, or Alton and Philandro themselves, then you are slowly but surely marching into the ‘part of the problem’ column. If you feel the shooting of the 14 people in Dallas was in any way justified, you are already deep into that column and need a wake up call.
Age 80
Imagine yourself at age 80. Who are you? Your decisions now, every day, are making you into that person. Do you want that person to be hateful, bitter, angry, resentful? If you do, then practice those things and you will become them. If you don’t, if you want, at age 80, to be kind, loving, forgiving, understanding, compassionate then you must practice those things now and every day. It’s how life works: You become what you practice.
The woman rubbed the tea pot and a Genie came out. The woman said, “Wow, this is amazing! I am going to wish for…”
But the Genie stopped her and said, “Sorry, I am not that kind of Genie. I don’t grant wishes and I don’t do dishes. I am a comedian, all I do is tell jokes.” And with that the Genie rolled herself into a ball and floated out of the room through the vent.
The Genie eventually made it big and got her own sitcom. But the woman who rubbed the teapot was bitter about it for the rest of her life.
