exaggerated, magnified—even savagely abrupt—removal of anything that could even remotely be distorted into “guidance” might be the very thing needed to save her.
Maybe someday there will be a pill that lowers the volume in that area of the brain. But there’s no such pill now.
The reason we have penicillin today, after all, is because somebody before us was willing to go ahead and eat the blue mold on the bread, to see if it might make the infection go away.
And it did.
H OW TO F EEL S ORRY FOR Y OURSELF
S ELF-PITY IS THE BESTIALITY of emotions: it absolutely disgusts people. When you’re feeling pity for yourself and somebody says to you, “You think maybe it’s time for the pity party to be over? You should stop feeling sorry for yourself and try to think positive,” it makes you wish you could saw their head off. Or, at the very least, it pisses you off. But there are probably only seven or eight people in the world who would defend this emotion. So you nod, “I know, you’re right.”
Self-pity knows it’s hated. It’s one emotion that lives up to its name: it’s something reserved for the self. Self-pity is a feeling you allow when you’re alone. If you allow it when you’re around other people, they fuss at you and never give you the sympathy you want. So self-pity becomes your private, secret feeling.
Self-pity is what compels you to say, “Oh, I can’t this Friday; I have other plans, but thanks for inviting me,” when you have no other plans except for spending the evening alonereflecting upon the injustices visited upon you. “That should have been my parking spot, I saw it before that other car. I’m just saying.”
If you ask somebody, “Why does it piss you off when you see somebody feeling sorry for themselves?” I’m not sure you’d get an accurate answer. I don’t think many people have really thought about why self-pity is so offensive.
I’ll tell you why I think it hits a nerve.
Remember when you were six or seven? Or if you can’t remember that far back, maybe you have a child or a niece this age. But I do remember being six and seven, so I can tell you: it was the most maddening thing in the world to be mistaken for five or six years old. If you were six and a half and somebody dared to call you six, you would absolutely correct them: “AND A HALF!”
At that age, you want to distance yourself as much as possible from babyness. Icky little baby days. You are not a baby anymore.
I believe self-pity is an emotion from our earliest days, probably among the first emotions we experienced.
You can see self-pity every day if you live near a playground like I do. Little kids trip or get shoved and they fall over all the time. Usually, they don’t appear to be hurt. They look surprised to see that what was just an instant ago beneath their shoes is now pressed up against their nose.
Little kids also know that injuries are an opportunity for extra affection.
So whenever you see a little kid take a spill, they’ll look around to verify a nearby adult presence and then they’ll let it rip.
This Wail of Death causes all the adults in the area toconverge on the kid and one of them scoops the kid up and begins the medicinal kisses.
Self-pity isn’t the most accurate description for this feeling because it describes only half of it: sad for me, I’m hurt. What’s missing is the other half: and you need to do something about it.
This is the infantile half that people find offensive on a primal level. It subconsciously reminds them of when they were six and somebody called them five. In other words, self-pity feels childish to adults. Especially the unspoken but baked-in meaning: and you need to do something about it.
Which is why self-pity is a very dangerous feeling for any adult to harbor.
It’s one thing to recognize your hurt. It’s quite healthy, in fact, to see and appreciate your own emotional injuries. Especially because as adults, there is no tall,
Maybe someday there will be a pill that lowers the volume in that area of the brain. But there’s no such pill now.
The reason we have penicillin today, after all, is because somebody before us was willing to go ahead and eat the blue mold on the bread, to see if it might make the infection go away.
And it did.
H OW TO F EEL S ORRY FOR Y OURSELF
S ELF-PITY IS THE BESTIALITY of emotions: it absolutely disgusts people. When you’re feeling pity for yourself and somebody says to you, “You think maybe it’s time for the pity party to be over? You should stop feeling sorry for yourself and try to think positive,” it makes you wish you could saw their head off. Or, at the very least, it pisses you off. But there are probably only seven or eight people in the world who would defend this emotion. So you nod, “I know, you’re right.”
Self-pity knows it’s hated. It’s one emotion that lives up to its name: it’s something reserved for the self. Self-pity is a feeling you allow when you’re alone. If you allow it when you’re around other people, they fuss at you and never give you the sympathy you want. So self-pity becomes your private, secret feeling.
Self-pity is what compels you to say, “Oh, I can’t this Friday; I have other plans, but thanks for inviting me,” when you have no other plans except for spending the evening alonereflecting upon the injustices visited upon you. “That should have been my parking spot, I saw it before that other car. I’m just saying.”
If you ask somebody, “Why does it piss you off when you see somebody feeling sorry for themselves?” I’m not sure you’d get an accurate answer. I don’t think many people have really thought about why self-pity is so offensive.
I’ll tell you why I think it hits a nerve.
Remember when you were six or seven? Or if you can’t remember that far back, maybe you have a child or a niece this age. But I do remember being six and seven, so I can tell you: it was the most maddening thing in the world to be mistaken for five or six years old. If you were six and a half and somebody dared to call you six, you would absolutely correct them: “AND A HALF!”
At that age, you want to distance yourself as much as possible from babyness. Icky little baby days. You are not a baby anymore.
I believe self-pity is an emotion from our earliest days, probably among the first emotions we experienced.
You can see self-pity every day if you live near a playground like I do. Little kids trip or get shoved and they fall over all the time. Usually, they don’t appear to be hurt. They look surprised to see that what was just an instant ago beneath their shoes is now pressed up against their nose.
Little kids also know that injuries are an opportunity for extra affection.
So whenever you see a little kid take a spill, they’ll look around to verify a nearby adult presence and then they’ll let it rip.
This Wail of Death causes all the adults in the area toconverge on the kid and one of them scoops the kid up and begins the medicinal kisses.
Self-pity isn’t the most accurate description for this feeling because it describes only half of it: sad for me, I’m hurt. What’s missing is the other half: and you need to do something about it.
This is the infantile half that people find offensive on a primal level. It subconsciously reminds them of when they were six and somebody called them five. In other words, self-pity feels childish to adults. Especially the unspoken but baked-in meaning: and you need to do something about it.
Which is why self-pity is a very dangerous feeling for any adult to harbor.
It’s one thing to recognize your hurt. It’s quite healthy, in fact, to see and appreciate your own emotional injuries. Especially because as adults, there is no tall,
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