the opposite of jealousy is admiration

​There are evil forces in the world that want to keep us forever divided. One of the most powerful of those forces is jealousy.

I googled the "opposite of jealousy" this morning. The first word that popped up was admiration.

This last Saturday, I ran the longest and highest and downright most challenging race of my life. There is no close second. For over 13 hours, I was on my feet roaming 38 miles of Georgia mountains. At times it felt aimless. It felt like a life sentence. All day long I was reminded over and over why I'd signed up for this race twice before, but never once completed it.

There's something else that happened all day long out there too. Something that made all the difference in my day. All day long I passed people who had reached the turn around points in their races and they were well on the way back to their own finish lines. Instinctively, I felt a deep sense of admiration for each of them. Every chance I could, I told them that.

In turn, I felt an equal amount of admiration from those same runners for me. Granted, they were going to be finishing their races many hours before me, so there was little of my race to trigger jealousy in them. Still, those far more successful runners seemed to be on a dual mission on those trails: finish their race while admiring as many runners as they could who were battling to finish theirs.

I've always wondered what life would look like if we turned it into a game of mutual admiration. A game of let's all run out there today and see who can catch the most people doing something right. Everyone report back here at the end of the day and brag about your findings. Fill Facebook and social media with stories of admiration for one another.

Jealousy is one of the things that stands in the way of that, I think. For some reason, when we identify something good in someone else's life we too often start wishing that was something we had in our lives. Or believing it's something we SHOULD have in our lives. Even worse, at times, we start thinking of all the reasons people don't deserve those good things we spotted in their lives.

That race on Saturday, as hard as it was - and I'll repeat, nothing has ever felt more daunting to me - it had the feel of a day long celebration. I'm not talking about the party at the finish line that celebrates the accomplishment. I'm talking about hanging out with people all day long who were intent on celebrating the way other people were attacking life.

I want to tell you, as a testimony, that kind of celebration is fuel for life. When people celebrate the way you are doing life it helps you clarify and provide determination toward where you want to go in life. It got me to a finish line that had long taken up space and started gathering dust in the impossible dream closet in my mind.

So today, if you're out there and you encounter people who may be struggling through life, consider it's possible they might need a little fuel. Maybe they need a little admiration.

Jealousy of someone else will try to steer your attention elsewhere. Don't let it.