Why The Nearest Are The Most Jealous Of You

The Swahili say that: "kikulacho, kii nguoni mwako", meaning that what bites you is within close range. This wisdom is shared across all cultures of the world.

A successful person at work has many jealous people around them. Because they stand out in the crowd, they have frenemies in the office, within the wider family, in his/her social circles and even in their place of worship.

It is possible to experience unrelated battles occurring in tandem or in an intertwined fashion, and in the course of which one gets exasperated if an amateur, or if experienced, gets exhausted by the never-ending challenges.

The most potent jealousies come from close range. It is per se a form of betrayal.

Koitalel Arap Samoe and Jesus Christ shared the same misfortune of being pointed out for execution by close aids. Unfortunately, the betrayers lead difficult lives soon after. But even harder to take was Koitalel's son's betrayal by Kenya. Arap Manyei was Kenya's longest-serving political detainee having spent four decades in the coolers and then like birds of a feather, all historians have buried this fact in the "kaburi la sahau".

For the Samoe's, two facts stick out. Koitalel lead the longest resistance struggle against the British empire anywhere the king of England had set out to conquer. For his son, Arap Manyei, he holds the record of detention in Kenya and beyond. But the country conspired to keep these facts silent at independence so that some new heroes could emerge with great ease.

Those who know you well, know your worth or true potential. And when you measure well above them, they make up for the difference by turning against you. In 90% of the cases of jealousy, those working against you hope to take your place in history. They know you so well that they have an easy time cutting you down to size, or out of the face of the earth, by simply harnessing the power found in privileged information.

The debate on whether it is the nearest people to you socially that are the most dangerous to you, or those that are occasionally in your crosshairs perhaps because you are competing for business, rages on. Either way, jealousy is involved.

At the workplace, we may never eradicate jealousy because we often compete for resources in terms of work tools, finances and influence. When you cannot eradicate something, you must find ways of managing it both in the short and long term.

So, the first assumption one must make in any situation is that anyone around you has great potential to get jealous and must be managed from the get-go. There are those who keep their guard high until someone earns their trust, and there are those who give someone a rope to hang themselves by showing them trust as soon as they meet. Go with what works for you.

Sibling rivalries are both positive and negative. Positive when it creates the challenge to better the partakers and negative when the jealousies get deeply embedded in their reactions toward each other.

A bad parent will employ the divide-and-rule tactics now and end up destroying the camaraderie between the kids. If you do this as a way of managing them in the short term, please stop it as it will affect you in your later years.

It also causes vulnerabilities where family interests are concerned, as enemies can take advantage of the mistrust exhibited within to grab opportunities or resources otherwise meant to be safely in the arms of the family unit.

And again, it is those closest to you who would know of family divisions.

We have peddlers of other people's soft underbellies. Many of these kinds are smartly dressed people found in social places and are out to pick weaknesses that can be commoditised at a fee to the right buyers. This calls for vigilance at all times.

Let us all learn to be conscious of the fact that we don't all share the same values much as we must make contact for various reasons. Just know that jealousy is widespread and needs you to play your role in the equation. But by all means, don't be the source.