Are people inherently jealous? Can someone every be truly content with their lives?

Sometimes I think the answers to my questions are yes and no, respectively. Maybe that just means that I am inherently jealous by nature and (though I hope this is not the truth) that I can't ever be truly content with my life. I like to think that because I think a certain way, all people are like that. This obviously makes no sense. Is constantly yearning for something more, wishing to be somewhere else or to be better than you are, and constantly comparing yourself to others and wishing to be more or less like them a trait that belongs to all humans, or just to those of us with weaker...something. Weaker conviction? Lower self esteem? Less faith in ourselves? Less motivation? Or is it the more motivated people that are like this? Is it possible that you can be truly happy with your life if you have little to no motivation? That can't be it - I have little motivation to do things yet am constantly striving (or should I say yearning) for more. Maybe it's a lack of drive. Perhaps the combination of desire to do things but a lack of drive to do them is the cause of my dissatisfaction.

There have been moments in my life where I have felt truly content with everything. While they have been rare, they have existed, yet when I finally got to those moments I was struck by a nagging persistent fear, a voice telling me "this will not last for long." Then, instead of being able to simply enjoy things as they were, I spent time worrying about what could go wrong. Thus, even the moments of true contentment are plagued by worry.

My family has always told me "there will always be someone better than you and worse than you." This is applied to pretty much anything: smarts, looks, musical capabilities, etc. The Guinness Book of World Records tells me otherwise. There are people who are simply THE best. Mariah Carey, for example, was in the book a few years back for having hit the highest note hit by a human and for having the largest vocal range. So I guess no one told her "there will always be someone better than you and worse than you." I don't really know what point I'm getting at here. If you look at Mariah Carey now, even being the best at something didn't save her from life. It didn't save her from whatever weirdness she went through, from her period of complete withdraw from the eyes of the public, from a career that is certainly not what it once was. What does this tell us? First, it goes to show that even the best of the best can't escape life, and that even being the best at one thing cannnot guarantee you happiness in life. The cliche here is that we should be happy with what we've got and do our best, and that as long as we've done our best we should (theoretically) be content.

If everything in life was as easily done as said, the world would be a very different place.

Yet again, my musings about life have taken me in a circle back to where I started. Well, not completely. I guess it is possible to be completely content with your life, but I don't think it can last. Maybe it can last a day, a week, a year, ten years. But, as pessimistic as this sounds, I don't think it's possible for someone to be completely, 100% happy with every aspect of their life for an indefinite amount of time. I don't really think that sounds pessimistic at all. I think it sounds realistic. I think I'm just speaking out of my ass and that everything I just wrote is completely obvious and nothing new at all. And thus, I will end with the two voices of un-newness that play off of each other:

"Just do your best and be happy with what you have" and "easier said than done." (Then of course there's always "be happy with the here and the now," and the Jewish saying "Who is a rich man? He who is happy with his lot in life," but I digress...)