Green is the colour of jealously
You sit through your life comparing yourself to every glimpse of a shadow that’s not your own, although we hope compared ourselves to ourselves, we don’t because that would be fair.
There is always someone more successful, earning more, more educated, more happy, more beautiful, more loved, more privileged. Every single thing we have convinced ourselves we are not.
Las Meninas has a thousand meanings of realities and illusions of royalty and artistic symbolism but I somehow still managed to envy Infanta surrounded with maids and castle in a beautiful gown a painter illustrating her over the royalty right in front of him. The luxuries of a fantasy ridden world that seems so distant it’s almost not believable. I can’t even imagine a time with kings and princesses, royal horse carriages and decorated elephant rides. But I still managed to get jealous of something I cannot even fathom beyond fairytales.
I wonder why faith in my very real self is much harder than envy towards something fictional.
Self loathe covered dopamine is in it’s prime, reading about accomplishments I don’t even want but I can’t stop looking, worse I can’t stop comparing.
Half of the world is withering away as the other half watches, climbed high up on their golden thrones made out of luck or hard work possibly. But I can’t do that to myself willingly anymore.
When I deep-dived into Las Meninas the literal or widely accepted meaning behind this beautiful piece of art baffled me. The painter was there to paint the royalty, visible oh-so-slightly in the mirror behind. The daughter Infanta was supposed to be there to keep the royal highness entertained and Velázquez, in his 4th or 5th portrait of the family, decided he would rather paint himself. While all I managed to take away from the painting was my envy towards something that’s not even the subject matter of the artwork.
Sometimes all of us forget we are the royalty being painted in the portrait of our lives. We spend so much time looking at little Infanta’s of our lives- mesmerised of course they’re beautiful but they’re not the subject matter of our lives. It’s us, visible in the little mirror behind Velázquez, it’s us he’s painting, we are the royalty, we are the subject. Don’t make someone else the hero of your story.
Don’t watch someone else’s journey to undermine your own. That’s not for you to worry about. Paint your own journey, at your own pace, in your own time.
I sometimes wonder if Velázquez painted me today, would he paint me green?