Public Poll

[trickykitty]

What is the difference between loving yourself and being selfish?


EDIT: I mean within one's own mind.
Like when does trying to cheer yourself up go too far and become a self-pity party? Is it just when you have been able to declare it as one or the other to yourself?

Comments

[flemco]

Depends. Are you asking my wife, or my ex-wife?

[trickykitty]

I'z edited the post.

[flemco]

Aha.

Simple rule of them: Never feel sorry for yourself. Ever. No matter what. Cheer yourself up by looking at the ridiculous world around you, and laughing at it. Even laugh at yourself. But do not pity yourself. NOTHING good comes from that.

I like this

[trickykitty]

Yeah, currently working through jealousy, which in my mind is just a fear of not getting something I want combined with self-pity.

Some people think the opposite of this is compersion, but you can be happy for someone else, yet still feel jealous and throw a pity party for yourself.

Your answer means just never ever going there, end of story. I like. :)

(Practicing the basic being happy with what I've got to combat the fear side of things - and boy I keep having to remind myself of how much I do have.)

Re: I like this

[flemco]

Learned the lesson about 7 years ago:

Anytime the world seems to be a cruel, horrible place, and that you are receiving suffering that you do not deserve, be it instigated by a malicious person, or just bad luck, think of this...

After evolving for millions of years, through aeons of change and growth, you, an insignificant piece of carbon, were lucky enough to have been born to feel anything at all. A hundred years feels like a lifetime to us, but to many other life forms, and definitely for inert balls of rock and gas floating in eternity, a hundred years is nothing.

Consider that every single person you have ever met, every person who came before you, every ancestor, every epic adventure, every human tragedy, every great achievement, every genocide, every wondrous birth, has all occurred on this tiny speck of rock we call the Earth. The farthest any human has gone outside of it is the moon. The fucking moon.

And no matter how well you do, or how miserably you fail, you will someday die. Everything you ever create will eventually pass away, forgotten, misplaced, destroyed, even. Permanence is an illusion.

When you look at this crazy, fucked-up, miraculous world, and then put it in the cosmic perspective, you can either laugh at the absurdity of it all, or kill yourself.

Because in the end, any second you waste feeling sorry for yourself is a second where you cause your own misery.

Your seconds on this earth are finite. Suffering is in no short supply already. Why give yourself more?

So speaking, the doomsayer departeth.

Thank You

[trickykitty]

This thought has helped me tremendously today. Yes, I am still reminded of your responses to this post months after posting. That was why I posted it in the first place.

Not only that, but the book I'm reading right now, Brain Tricks, says pretty much the exact same thing: Think about how insignificant one person is compared to the eons of eternity. I think you would like this book.