So... how do you think Marie A felt about bread pudding?
Jealousy.
Greed.
Two of my less charming traits.
I acknowledge every day how lucky I am: I have a nice house, a great family, wonderful friends, and am involved in some pretty interesting pursuits that has made my life rich and full.
So why do I want more?
Is it good old-fashioned ambition? Ambition is a wonderful thing: Olympic champions rely on it to go faster, higher, swifter; scholars depend on it to pull down A's; artists need it to make their craft unique; for doctors, it's a high bar set that quite literally life or death.
It has been said before, however, that ambition is a wonderful assistant, but a cruel master. That can be interpreted as ambition is a great tool to help one achieve goals, but should not a sole motivator.
That brings me to jealousy. Even though I have so much, the desire to be richer, thinner, more talented, prettier, and funnier hasn't gone away since I became aware these things are important for success in life. Sometimes, I'm oddly philisophical about the fact that while I don't possess A, my B compensates for it and then some. But other times, the green-eyed monster devastates me when I hear of another's good fortune, as I wonder why this didn't happen to me.
I consider this jealousy also a sign of greed, or "being the girl with the most cake." I feel like I'm fighting human nature in this scenario, because even though I try to be a fair as possible, when it comes up to slicing that proverbial cake up, I'm looking to score the slice that's just a sliver bigger or at least has a big frosting rose on it.
So does age help you combat this? I don't want to be bitter while surrounded by ever-increasingly empty prizes at the age of 70, yet I don't want to give up on pursuing the various goals I have in life. To quote Dear Abby and sis Ann Landers, perhaps the best advice is to MYOB, and quit competing against others on some sort of imaginary score card and do for myself and also, cut myself some slack.
Besides, I don't really like cake -- I'm more of a chocolate gal.
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