What are you proud of? When your boss looks down upon you, or when a boy/girl you like treats you badly, or when a group you identify with is disrespected, or someone completely unknown shouts at you on the street, why is it that you are hurt? I feel bad in such situations, but when I honestly ask myself, 'what am I so proud of', I don't have any answers for myself.
What is so special in me that gives me a right to get upset when I am disrespected or not loved? Why does it hurt so much?
Religions tell us we are special in the eyes of God, or there is an essence, something special within us that makes us and our lives special. Are they sure? Even it is true, it is just a reason, an explanation for a feeling we had since we were kids and didn't know anything about God or Religion, a feeling we have always had.
If not, am I proud of those little achievements I have made in life. The achievements are mostly relative to other people around me. does that mean that if not for those people, I wouldn't have any pride. But I was still proud, even before I did any of those things. These so called "achievements" are just re-affirmations of the pride I have always had.
This pride or self-respect (maybe a better term), I have always carried with myself as long as I can remember. When something good happened or I succeeded in something, it became stronger and I felt confident and happy. When I lost, or thought that I was rejected, I felt hurt and sad. It was difficult for me to understand why my happiness was so dependent on what other people thought and did. Why did I have to prove myself to so many people? Why did I have to be approved of in order to be happy? I never understood...
The pain and happiness caused by this pride, was simple to deal with when I was a kid, but as I grew up, the effect of these somehow became stronger. Or maybe I started feeling it more. So, I came up with many ways to deal with it in my mind (many times without knowing). Some of them were:
1. Rationalize: When someone says something bad, I started thinking that they didn't actually say anything bad about me, but about how I did things. So if I do things differently, they would come to like/respect me again. So, I tried to change and went back again and again. This does work sometimes, but sometimes it takes you in the wrong direction. I had gotten too attached to getting approval and love rather than doing things right. As you learn in life, some people really do hate you, and no matter what you do, you can't change their minds.
Another way to Rationalize, is to think that there is something wrong not with me, but with the other person. So, fuck them. This is the next stage of frustration. If you don't care about other people, they can't hurt you right. A morphed version of this is when you only care about good opinions of yourself, start thinking that everyone else is wrong and is a loser. Now, its easy to see why this can be bad. Even people like Presidents suffer with this problem.
2. Don't push yourself: Don't get too involved, don't trust anyone completely, and stay away from any kind of commitment. So, in the end if you fail, and anyone criticizes you (or you criticize yourself), you have an excuse. You can tell yourself that you didn't give your all - if you had, you would have done much better. You remain mediocre forever, but hey atleast you know you could have done much better right. And so, your status or position in society does not reflect the real you. So, you are free to live in your own world. As you don't recognize what the world says about you, you can be free from requiring their approval.
A corollary of this approach is to run away as soon as things start to look bad. Bail out before you get hurt. Ditch the other person, the other job, before they get a chance to ditch you. The problem with this approach is that, you usually end up with nothing at all, because there are hard times in every relationship and every work.
3. Push yourself too hard: The opposite method also works. If you are really hurting, get involved in something and don't let yourself think about anything else. Shut your mind, keep doing something unless it gets back in. Its not that you have to enjoy what you are doing, but just keep doing it all the time. To hell with sleep, food, friends, life... In the end when you cross your limits, you are so exhausted that you begin to hate the very thing that you once enjoyed. You think you are working hard, or giving your best, but in reality you are just scared and running away from yourself.
4. Hedge your commitments: Another way of go around disappointment is to do 10 things at the same time. So, if you loose in some of them, you still have others. So have two girlfriends, and three jobs. This may work well for some time, but if either of those girlfriends or bosses find out that you are not committing everything, you risk loosing both of them.
You could be honest with them from the beginning, but then neither you nor they will be happy without a full commitment. You will have to start lying to atleast some of them. The issue of commitment will come up again and again until the relationships become bitter. Very few people are able to successfully pull this off.
5. Take pills, drink, eat food, or watch TV all day long: Do anything you can to forget about your hurting insides. You won't be hurt by things, events and people around you if you are not aware of them right. You have an addiction, even better... you don't have to force yourself any more. Accept that you can't fight with yourself and what you feel like doing and just do it. The only problem is, when you are not drunk, high or feeding the addiction, your pride and your heart hurts even more. Now to make yourself forget, you have to drink, eat or watch even more... and it never stops...
Why don't any of these methods work and why are they usually wrong? I don't think there is a clear answer to this question. But I'll give you some of the answers that I got...
I think that's because they are the 'easy ways out'. The best thing to do when you fear your pride being hurt is to take a moment and think what is the hardest (or atleast harder) thing for you to do at that moment. And do the hard thing. Face the fear and once it is all over, you will come out feeling better yourself. Results might not be as you expected, but atleast you were better than you expected.
In the end, the root of all pride or self-confidence, is the feeling of being alive, the feeling of existence of 'I'. The essence of being alive, is an inherent tendency in all living things to independent, to rebel against nature and to carve one's own path. At its roots, Life is the fight between will and circumstances. And pride comes from this feeling of independence. All other kinds of supposed pride are just complications on top of this, that arise from ego, arrogance, and most of it just imagination. But this basic happiness of being, is at the core of every thought, it is the proof of our existence.
So, we must keep on living, keep on fighting, and do the hard things. Pride is hurt not because someone treats us bad, but because we take the easy way of feeling bad at that instant, we take pity on ourselves.
I am still looking for answers to these questions, but I guess I am truly myself when I make the tough choices.
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