Your Pain is a Selfish Indulgence. A Christmas Thought.
This is not gonna make me any friends, especially in the female realm, but luckily, I have never cared about my popularity, nor, more often, my infamy.
First a few premises.
1. If you are Biblically inclined, this concept is most clearly expressed in the story of Lot, or rather of his wife, which is not named in the Bible.
2. This concept I will be explaining will be more readily understood by:
A) people who can do logic.
B) people who know at the core of their being that there is an afterlife.
3. It affects women more than men (hence why it is Lot’s wife that turns to a pillar of salt.)
In short, effeminate men, unbelievers, the rhetoric driven zombies, women, small children, and domestic animals, are unlikely to even understand, never mind agree.
There are also a couple of important points to keep on mind:
1. This is NOT theory. It is as dialectical as engineering. If you build crappy foundations, ignore tolerances and safety margins, your building or bridge will collapse. The point of this post is a simple objective fact, demonstrable and observable by anyone who cares to do so dispassionately and objectively. How you feel about it is completely irrelevant. It is literally no different if you got upset at the fact that 2+2 equals 4.
2. On a personal level, I am not just whistling dixie, or expressing some nice, neat theory I might have come up with or read somewhere as an exercise in intellectual aesthetics. I have lived this point personally and in a very real way and can attest, precisely because of it, to the accuracy of what is explained below.
3. The below applies somewhat less to people who are on their own, have no dependants or close family living with them and so on, however, note I said somewhatless. Not that it doesn’t apply, or that the theory is different for them, or that there are any different rules for them. I am merely saying that for the single/isolated person, their sin of selfishness is somewhat attenuated because the effects of it are more limited in scope. That is, they affect primarily the person themselves and not so many others around them.
On these notes then, we are ready to understand how and when your pain is simply and mostly a totally selfish indulgence.
One last point: I will be using an extreme example so as to make the point clearer and more obvious, but in essence, this is simply a matter of degree of emotional intensity. The rules of math are the same, regardless of the size of the numbers you are dealing with, and that’s the same here.
Here is the example then.
Let’s assume that you have a family with six small(ish) children, and the unthinkable tragedy happens that one of them dies.
It is a horrific though, one no parent wants to indulge even for a moment, but that is precisely why I am using it. Few things could be worse in life than such an event.
Now, it is absolutely normal that there is a period of shock, of rage, mourning and so on. And of course much of this depends on the exact circumstances too. But let us suppose it was simply an unavoidable accident with literally no one to blame.
How should such a parent, afflicted by such a tragedy conduct themselves going forward?
Let’s look at the options:
1. Irretrievably and permanently damaged and morose, depressed, unable to really enjoy anything anymore due to the shadowy ghost of their dead child being permanently in their mental and emotional orbit.
2. Pretend that you are not affected as much as possible externally, but really living pretty much as 1 above internally.
3. Mourn, then simply get on with your life, focussing on the good and your existing children and spouse and genuinely “get over it”. Be able to be happy and joyful and pleasant for your remaining children and spouse to interact with you.
Clearly, anyone sane, will say the best option is number 3. And rightly so, because this causes the maximum good to the most people.
But here come the screaming banshees and faggots “how could you… how dare you… no parent can… any mother would… any father would…” blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, and whine.
Why? Because UPPERMOST in those railing against me is NOT what is best for everyone else. These people are emotionally, selfishly, attached to their need to feel bad. And fuck who else that hurts. Their own personal need to feel pain, guilt, shame, sadness, despair and whatever other long list of negative emotions, is more important to them than stopping, calculating what is best, and then acting accordingly.
It’s bad enough if these people are doing that primarily on an internal, self-absorbed, self-referential level. But, of course, some drama queens actually also consider the outside world and their pathological need to be seen to be suffering.
And, make no mistake, society expects and wants you to feel miserable and bad forever and ever.
Because it’s all show. For the monkeys I find myself surrounded by on this planet, the most important thing for them, more often than not, is very much how theythink everyone else thinks of them. In reality very few of them think anything at all, because they are always simply worrying about what everyone thinks of them too! And even when they criticise someone else, it is —almost invariably— simply because they think it will put them in a better light with everyone else.
But even if we leave aside these common, garden variety, monkey-narcissuses, and we look only at those who genuinely don’t care about the outside world very much but nevertheless wallow in their own misery and self-pity, even if it were only in the privacy of their own life as a single person, what are they doing?
What are they doing to themselves and to everyone that comes into contact with them?
In short, they are putting out there, a mild form of toxic poison laced with fear and despair.
Now, it is, of course, also possible to have the very real and opposite narcissist. Someone that psychotically, genuinely doesn’t care if a couple of their children drop dead. Such creatures exist too, though I hope they are rare (and even a few of them is a few too many). But we are not talking about them. We’re talking about the average person.
After a relatively short time of mourning, the ONLY answer that makes sense is to GENUINELY wake up as happy as possible and continue to GENUINELY go through your day with a sense of the divine, the graceful, the grateful and the joyful within you.
You can’t fake it, though you might feel it’s forced for a time, and it may be. But in time, it is your absolute duty, if you are any kind of half-decent husband, or wife, or parent, to make it real.
Do you really think your own personal wound is less if you do this?
Do you really think you “forget” a child of yours?
I assure you, you don’t forget, and your pain is not less. But your experience of it, and more importantly the experience of all those around you that you might care about and especially that care about you, can be extremely different and a lot better than the alternative.
“I can’t control what I feel!” Shout all the women in chorus. Stridently. Loudly. Whiningly.
Yes. Yes you can. Because if you absolutely knew you were going to be tortured to death by being chopped into little pieces over the next month, and so would all your remaining loved ones, guess what: you would change your mood there and then if the threat was absolutely real.
Yes, in a few pathological cases even then, they might not, and would condemn both themselves AND their loved ones to a horrific and drawn out death. And I ask you: are such people sane? Are they good? Or are they either brain damaged unfortunates, or, far more likely, absolutely so attached to wanting to feel what they think is most appropriate that they would let the world burn rather than admit that they, and their emotions, are not the center of the universe?
As my grandfather used to say:
Maths is not an opinion.
So: to all you sad people that had sad and tragic things happen to you. Let it go. Get up. Don’t worry, you’ll die soon enough. You’ll have your time before God to answer for all your sins and errors. Don’t worry, your life, at some point, absolutely will end.
So let it be; let it be then.
And get off your lazy, selfish ass, now, and LIVE.
“Oh but it’s so hard…”
Yes. It is. Which is precisely why I said lazy and selfish. Not just selfish.
To round off the Biblical tale:
Do you KNOW why Lot’s life turned to a pillar of salt? Because looking back to the past, or the unavoidable, and focussing on that instead of the road directly in front of you, can only end in an infinite amount of tears. And when the liquid of tears evaporates, all that is left, is a pillar of salt.
So don’t be Lot’s wife.
Get up. Smile. Look at the sunrise, and the sunset, and the other small children, and friends, and your wife, your husband, your loved ones, and be grateful, and feel joy. Serenity, peace. Even as it flows over the open cut in the depths of your heart.
Because anything less is a cowardly sin born of sloth, pride and ego.
And should any judge you or gossip against you, because of you doing the correct thing, know then, they are not people worth bothering with. At all.
Have a loving and lovely Christmas, and remember what it is about and Who did what for you, without feeling sorry for Himself.
And how.
Thank you Lord, for all you have done and given to us and all you continue to do and give to us, and for your mercy on us, though we are all, miserable sinners.
Your Pain is a Selfish Indulgence. A Christmas Thought.
This is not gonna make me any friends, especially in the female realm, but luckily, I have never cared about my popularity, nor, more often, my infamy.
First a few premises.
1. If you are Biblically inclined, this concept is most clearly expressed in the story of Lot, or rather of his wife, which is not named in the Bible.
2. This concept I will be explaining will be more readily understood by:
A) people who can do logic.
B) people who know at the core of their being that there is an afterlife.
3. It affects women more than men (hence why it is Lot’s wife that turns to a pillar of salt.)
In short, effeminate men, unbelievers, the rhetoric driven zombies, women, small children, and domestic animals, are unlikely to even understand, never mind agree.
There are also a couple of important points to keep on mind:
1. This is NOT theory. It is as dialectical as engineering. If you build crappy foundations, ignore tolerances and safety margins, your building or bridge will collapse. The point of this post is a simple objective fact, demonstrable and observable by anyone who cares to do so dispassionately and objectively. How you feel about it is completely irrelevant. It is literally no different if you got upset at the fact that 2+2 equals 4.
2. On a personal level, I am not just whistling dixie, or expressing some nice, neat theory I might have come up with or read somewhere as an exercise in intellectual aesthetics. I have lived this point personally and in a very real way and can attest, precisely because of it, to the accuracy of what is explained below.
3. The below applies somewhat less to people who are on their own, have no dependants or close family living with them and so on, however, note I said somewhat less. Not that it doesn’t apply, or that the theory is different for them, or that there are any different rules for them. I am merely saying that for the single/isolated person, their sin of selfishness is somewhat attenuated because the effects of it are more limited in scope. That is, they affect primarily the person themselves and not so many others around them.
On these notes then, we are ready to understand how and when your pain is simply and mostly a totally selfish indulgence.
One last point: I will be using an extreme example so as to make the point clearer and more obvious, but in essence, this is simply a matter of degree of emotional intensity. The rules of math are the same, regardless of the size of the numbers you are dealing with, and that’s the same here.
Here is the example then.
Let’s assume that you have a family with six small(ish) children, and the unthinkable tragedy happens that one of them dies.
It is a horrific though, one no parent wants to indulge even for a moment, but that is precisely why I am using it. Few things could be worse in life than such an event.
Now, it is absolutely normal that there is a period of shock, of rage, mourning and so on. And of course much of this depends on the exact circumstances too. But let us suppose it was simply an unavoidable accident with literally no one to blame.
How should such a parent, afflicted by such a tragedy conduct themselves going forward?
Let’s look at the options:
1. Irretrievably and permanently damaged and morose, depressed, unable to really enjoy anything anymore due to the shadowy ghost of their dead child being permanently in their mental and emotional orbit.
2. Pretend that you are not affected as much as possible externally, but really living pretty much as 1 above internally.
3. Mourn, then simply get on with your life, focussing on the good and your existing children and spouse and genuinely “get over it”. Be able to be happy and joyful and pleasant for your remaining children and spouse to interact with you.
Clearly, anyone sane, will say the best option is number 3. And rightly so, because this causes the maximum good to the most people.
But here come the screaming banshees and faggots “how could you… how dare you… no parent can… any mother would… any father would…” blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, and whine.
Why? Because UPPERMOST in those railing against me is NOT what is best for everyone else. These people are emotionally, selfishly, attached to their need to feel bad. And fuck who else that hurts. Their own personal need to feel pain, guilt, shame, sadness, despair and whatever other long list of negative emotions, is more important to them than stopping, calculating what is best, and then acting accordingly.
It’s bad enough if these people are doing that primarily on an internal, self-absorbed, self-referential level. But, of course, some drama queens actually also consider the outside world and their pathological need to be seen to be suffering.
And, make no mistake, society expects and wants you to feel miserable and bad forever and ever.
Because it’s all show. For the monkeys I find myself surrounded by on this planet, the most important thing for them, more often than not, is very much how they think everyone else thinks of them. In reality very few of them think anything at all, because they are always simply worrying about what everyone thinks of them too! And even when they criticise someone else, it is —almost invariably— simply because they think it will put them in a better light with everyone else.
But even if we leave aside these common, garden variety, monkey-narcissuses, and we look only at those who genuinely don’t care about the outside world very much but nevertheless wallow in their own misery and self-pity, even if it were only in the privacy of their own life as a single person, what are they doing?
What are they doing to themselves and to everyone that comes into contact with them?
In short, they are putting out there, a mild form of toxic poison laced with fear and despair.
Now, it is, of course, also possible to have the very real and opposite narcissist. Someone that psychotically, genuinely doesn’t care if a couple of their children drop dead. Such creatures exist too, though I hope they are rare (and even a few of them is a few too many). But we are not talking about them. We’re talking about the average person.
After a relatively short time of mourning, the ONLY answer that makes sense is to GENUINELY wake up as happy as possible and continue to GENUINELY go through your day with a sense of the divine, the graceful, the grateful and the joyful within you.
You can’t fake it, though you might feel it’s forced for a time, and it may be. But in time, it is your absolute duty, if you are any kind of half-decent husband, or wife, or parent, to make it real.
Do you really think your own personal wound is less if you do this?
Do you really think you “forget” a child of yours?
I assure you, you don’t forget, and your pain is not less. But your experience of it, and more importantly the experience of all those around you that you might care about and especially that care about you, can be extremely different and a lot better than the alternative.
“I can’t control what I feel!” Shout all the women in chorus. Stridently. Loudly. Whiningly.
Yes. Yes you can. Because if you absolutely knew you were going to be tortured to death by being chopped into little pieces over the next month, and so would all your remaining loved ones, guess what: you would change your mood there and then if the threat was absolutely real.
Yes, in a few pathological cases even then, they might not, and would condemn both themselves AND their loved ones to a horrific and drawn out death. And I ask you: are such people sane? Are they good? Or are they either brain damaged unfortunates, or, far more likely, absolutely so attached to wanting to feel what they think is most appropriate that they would let the world burn rather than admit that they, and their emotions, are not the center of the universe?
As my grandfather used to say:
Maths is not an opinion.
So: to all you sad people that had sad and tragic things happen to you. Let it go. Get up. Don’t worry, you’ll die soon enough. You’ll have your time before God to answer for all your sins and errors. Don’t worry, your life, at some point, absolutely will end.
So let it be; let it be then.
And get off your lazy, selfish ass, now, and LIVE.
“Oh but it’s so hard…”
Yes. It is. Which is precisely why I said lazy and selfish. Not just selfish.
To round off the Biblical tale:
Do you KNOW why Lot’s life turned to a pillar of salt? Because looking back to the past, or the unavoidable, and focussing on that instead of the road directly in front of you, can only end in an infinite amount of tears. And when the liquid of tears evaporates, all that is left, is a pillar of salt.
So don’t be Lot’s wife.
Get up. Smile. Look at the sunrise, and the sunset, and the other small children, and friends, and your wife, your husband, your loved ones, and be grateful, and feel joy. Serenity, peace. Even as it flows over the open cut in the depths of your heart.
Because anything less is a cowardly sin born of sloth, pride and ego.
And should any judge you or gossip against you, because of you doing the correct thing, know then, they are not people worth bothering with. At all.
Have a loving and lovely Christmas, and remember what it is about and Who did what for you, without feeling sorry for Himself.
And how.
Thank you Lord, for all you have done and given to us and all you continue to do and give to us, and for your mercy on us, though we are all, miserable sinners.
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