WHY MEEE ????

SELF-PITY

THE SYMPTOMS

A statement we often hear from young people with many E’s and even more questions marks, just to give emphasis on the sad feeling they under go. Why is that whatever vehicle I travel by, gets one or another snag en-route and never reaches the destination in time? Why do the people around me stare at me as if I am an intruder or an absconder from some zoo? Why is that, whomever I approach asking to spare a cup of mattha (मट्ठा) for my sake, his buffalo along with its baby appears to die the day before? Why? It appears God has written my fate not with His usual pen but by LHMNh´. Why it is that the status, comforts and boons I am very much entitled of, are invariably become the bounty of my competitors? Why are my parents so imposing and dictatorial while my friends’ so understanding and loving? Why every thing bad in the world comes to me and every thing good goes to others? Why? Whyy?? Whyyy???

SELF PITY: AN ADDICTIVE SEDATIVE.

Well, this syndrome is called self-pity which I may earnestly say, is not at all healthy one. It is not even logical. Psychologically speaking, self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics. It is addictive, gives momentary pleasure, relieves you falsely from pain of your failures and incompetence, and gives you a self-made excuse that fate or luck has deserted you. When we pity ourselves our vision is limited to ourselves. We lose the ability to see anything beyond. When we have problems, all we see, are our problems and nothing else and also what we love of talking about. We don’t see the good things in lives at all. Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

A PAINTING WITHOUT ERASER

Remember that you are here in this world to paint your life on the canvas of time within the resources available to you and without of course any eraser. So, be very careful. There are a series of great opportunities that are brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems waiting for you. Please understand that it is not what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing, that makes you happy or sad, IT IS ONLY WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT.

Self-pity is a psychological state of mind often found within an individual who perceives himself in a difficult (or unfortunate) state. He has not able to accept the situation as it is and feels that he lacks the confidence or ability to cope up with it or move on from it. He may also believe he is the victim of events and, therefore, deserves condolences from every one around him.

HOWS AND WHYS OF SELF-PITY

Self-pity can also be amazingly self-sustaining, particularly when coupled with feelings of depression or other extreme emotional conditions. It is a perverse way of paying attention to oneself. It is a means of self-soothing or self-nurturing. He feels as if he is left alone to face the problems of life which leaving others keep attacking him only and there is no help from any corner. His mind goes back to his childhood when all the care and attention he received from every one. His weak and fragile childhood takes over his mental equipoise and destroys his emotional adulthood. As a compromise he so imprudently imposes the self-pity to gain attention from others or dramatize distress in order to receive the same pay-off. It is a misguided attempt to seek emotional intimacy with others by evoking their feelings of compassion.  

CONCLUSION

Self-pity and happiness cannot co-exist together. It causes a paralysis of performance. Then the ability of forward momentum gets extinguished. Remember, it is an all consuming monster that will destroy everything in your life except itself. Don’t nourish it. Destroy it before it destroys you.

WAYS TO TACKLE SELF-PITY

1.     Confess/admit the mental felony of self-pity.

2.     Forgive others who have wounded or hurt you.

3.     Realize that the situation you are in is the best situation to build up your personality provided you make use of it.

4.     Broaden your view. Don’t look at yourself as an insignificant individual but as a part of composite divine picture, a part of whole society.

5.     Don’t be self-centred. Come out of your little miserable cell and look at the totality.

6.     Follow some ideal and dedicate yourself to that ideal.

7.     Cultivate some hobby that involves your physical, mental and intellectual personalities at same time.

8.     Pitying yourself is a dead rat in your personality suitcase. Know it. How can you keep a dirty smelling dead rat there? Throw it out.

9.     Pray and meditate daily.

SUMMARY

 

This is a difficult time, and in one way or other, this has always been so. The problems of the time are many. Whether it’s not getting a desired job, dealing with a difficult co-worker, struggling to get along with a boss, hurting financially, coping with health problems, or nursing a damaged relationship, we all have to face adversities and trials in our lives. May be the struggles we go through are the result of choices we made, or may be they are the outcome of the circumstances we have no control over them. We may not be aware of the cause or reason but logically there has to be one. (Can there be an effect without a cause?) Regardless of the cause, the trials we encounter or the pain we suffer must not go in vain. Every trial or pain can educate us. They, in fact, if properly utilized, build our character and help us in developing patience, humility and strength, provided we don’t waste them and permit them to do so.

During the difficult periods we always have a choice to feel sorry for the state of affairs and become bitter. But we always have another choice as well. We have the choice to see the bright side of the coin, the light and the joy that lies beyond the troubling hindrances of the thicket of jungle of our painful present. We have the choice to milk out these trials, allowing them to nurture our character and help us become stronger, and more charitable and dexterous person. We have choice to be appreciative, choosing to be happy, and seeing the colour and light that blesses our life from within. We all have the choices to say “Why Me?” “Why am I so sanctified and considered most suitable to face these challenges?”