They live on every street, nestled in the corner cul-de-sac lot with the big SUV sitting next to the mint condition Harley Davidson. The basketball goal sits on the neatly manicured driveway which leads to a glistening pool complete with diving board and slide. Mom is a hottie, tan with perfectly manicured toes and great clothes – while dad travels quite a bit remaining elusive. The kids are always the best at everything they do, seemingly the most privileged kids on the block! We wave and smile casually as we pass them on the road; but inside we are filled with envy- silently wishing that we would see their home listed in the weekly foreclosure notices just so we could exclaim “I knew it!”
The Jones’s have been around since the dawn of man kind. The cavemen that came up with the idea of getting the first hair cut and made exquisite soaps from rosewood pulp bore the same last name, and so their legacy continues. They are the have mores, do betters, one-uppers and happiest people we have ever seen. But do they really exist? Or are they simply a figure of our own wild and less than trustworthy imagination?
Every family whether they are the Smith’s or the Jones’s lives a life that is totally encompassed by their own value system. Few if any family system shares that wholly. But the one thing that all humans share is the ability to perceive the world around them through distorted lenses that can make things appear completely differently than they actually are. Unfortunately our perception and belief that something is true- makes it true. So when we perceive some one or another family as always having more, or always being the ‘lucky’ ones or even worse out to get us by beating us at everything – than hands down, they do! Our anger, frustration, jealousy and victimized way of thinking only serves to make us more right and even less likely to succeed ourselves. As complicated as that may seem, it is rather simple!
What really is going on when we try to keep up with someone or something else is that we are living a life defined by outside sources and appearances. When that is true than we are toiling toward a goal that will never fulfill us personally or as a family and therefore will feel like a ‘have not’ regardless of who our neighbors are. The truth about the Jones’s is that they are probably jealous that your husband cooks dinner every night or that you only have one mortgage on your home. To the Jones’s – you are the Jones’s! So all this time is spent coveting and feeling jealous (perhaps normal) without facing the realization that 100% of the time we are all more alike than different. Mrs. Jones is probably annoyed that few of the other mothers talk to her and thinks she lives in a subdivision of snobs, while Mr. Jones just wants to be home all week to catch his kids baseball game or enjoy his hottie wife. The perception of the grass is always greener undoubtedly leaves us color blind.
The truth about the Jones’s is that they have a bunch of secrets just like we do and that perhaps they too are totally unfulfilled as they try to live up to way of life that robs them of their joy. Or perhaps they are lucky, happy, hard working and diligent people who create wealth inside and out. If the latter is true than it would be advised to befriend them so we too could learn the secrets to true success. But until we know them, it’s silly to judge. And as adults it’s silly to be envious or ugly in our thinking especially since it will cause us more harm than anyone else.
A wise person told me once that normally what we don’t like about other people is really something that we don’t like about ourselves. That we use other groups, other people and certainly the Jones’s to mirror our intimate self emotionally. Perhaps the idea of the Jones’s is just our familial mirror. As you begin to see the people you dont like in life in this light it gives great pause to begin considering what it is we could or should change internally or in our family so that we will be less threatened by people we ‘perceive’ as doing well or at the very least doing better than us. Another idea is we begin to manifest gratitude into our response towards things, others and especially ourselves so that we will never really notice our lack.
The truth about the Jones’s is that they exist more completely and more entirely in our own mind and although we might believe or perceive that they live on our block; it is only true because we believe it to be. It is never finance, status, importance or the collection of material things that makes someone appear or become better or even more important than us; it is rather the depth that we feel or perceive our own inadequacies and unfulfilled desires that define our own or our family’s success in life. The Jones’s quite simply are a fabricated theory that if allowed, can seemingly and overwhelmingly cease us from manifesting abundance and joy in our own life.
