A Treatise on Self-Pity and Manipulative Behavior

This is my pretend grandson, Andrew. Since he moved out of the house with his parents I haven't seen him as much. You can't see it in this photo, but his hair has grown long and curly in the back. Plus he's walking since the last time I saw him.

In related news (as related as vinegar is related to baking soda) I think everyone hates the idea of self-pity and there may be some saints who never indulge in it. I may choose my friends wrong, but I can't think of one who has been perfect at abstaining from self-pity. My grandfather was stoic and didn't mention pain, and by the time his colon cancer was detected, he had about two months of life left in him.

Why is it that most of us have such an unpleasant reaction when we hear someone seeming to whine about their perceived difficulties, when we detect a note of blame in the whining??? I myself am a veteran of much study of spiritual traditions that have close to zero tolerance for whining and blaming external people and circumstances for our problems. In theory I know how to take full responsibility for every little thing, for the things I like about my life and the things I don't like.

Then Ian walks in the door without knocking and I say OH SHIT.

We're all hopeless. We can go ahead and have incredibly high expectations for ourselves and maybe having such expectations will empower us to achieve at a very high level. But, can we do equally well in every aspect of our lives??? I have a very high-achieving mother who can be quite rude to salesclerks and low-level bureaucrats. Apparently she doesn't see Christ in such people, or anyone who reassures her.

I'm more hopeless than most because I sometimes blame my mental illness for aspects of my life that I'm less thrilled about. Sometimes my mental illness is not at fault, instead it's my weak character, lack of fortitude and GRIT.

On the plane to California last December I read an article in Psychology Today about how GRIT is the most important ingredient in a successful life. Why do I have so little of it?

There are those who claim we love each other for our strengths; perhaps I have been poisoned by reading books like The Spirituality of Imperfection which, believe it or not, suggests that none of us are God. I admire people for their strengths, am inspired by the strong and good things people do; when I realize that I don't possess the qualities of people in movies it is humbling and sometimes I get down on myself. In true friendship, consequently, at least for a person like me who is not perfect, there needs to be a great deal of forgiveness. If a person has qualities I feel I simply can't forgive, I am less likely to pursue a friendship with that person. If someone is already my friend and does something wretched, I can usually forgive it.

Perhaps I blame my mental illness for too many of my shortcomings and failures. Something else that happens is that friends will blame my shortcomings and failures on my mental illness, even when something else entirely is to blame. I was tired from a long trip when I visited my friend Ellen, she was upset because I was low on energy, and blamed my mental illness instead of the real culprit, which was my being tired and physically out of shape. For example, I stopped trying to do the postures in Ellen's yoga class after an hour and fifteen minutes of the hour-and-a-half class. I simply gave up and sat there on the mat and waited. Mental illness???

My "Underachiever" blog entry had a tongue-in-cheek undercurrent which perhaps was not detected by every reader. It is far from my intention to weep and moan and sob because I am not a tenured full professor of Comp Lit at Yale--though I can and will insist that in addition to all the other reasons I am not in this position, my mental illness has played an enormous role in making this impossible. But in truth I feel that nothing happens by accident, and the path that might have led to the Comp Lit doctorate and the tenured full professorship--even at Podunk University in Nowheresville, USA--was never a viable path, nor do I seriously regret not taking it. I bring up the mental illness by way of explanation because it does explain a lot.

The purpose of this blog is not to whine. And yet, what's really wrong with whining??? You point out some aspect of life that you at least sometimes find simply unacceptable, and you point your finger at it and throw back your head and sob like a cartoon character. Or you do the eqivalent of this verbally, and blame everything from Adam and Eve to George W. Bush, not leaving out, along the way, a few close friends who've hurt your feelings.

Men, of course, are usually upset when women cry. They can't stand it. I can remember strained relations with males of the species dating back to summer camp when I was--no, wait, I can remember fighting with boys in pre-school because I wanted to play with the police car, and I would (possibly) cry when I didn't get my way (it makes a good story to say I cried, anyway). So I have this habit of being manipulative with the opposite sex that dates back to when I was about two feet tall. The inch-high Freudian analyst that lives in my head is nodding now, and making big strokes on his notepad with his ball point pen. The thing is, if I had wanted to play with the Barbies, I would not have had to compete with these boys all the time.

It all kind of reminds me of the movie When Harry Met Sally in which the question of whether men and women can be friends keeps coming up. Of course, Harry and Sally cannot be friends, ultimately. Can a man and a woman only be friends if they are not attracted to each other??? Does this ever happen???

It's as bad to be manipulative as it is to whine. When friends are low on money, and tell me specifically what it is they cannot afford, I tend to think they are hinting (rather obviously) that they want me to come across with the cash they're lacking. Because they are not coming out with a direct request for the funds, it strikes me that they are being manipulative. But I am not enough of a perfectionist on behalf of my friends to become incensed about what, to my mind, is simply very human behavior. And guess what, sometimes it turns out my friends were not even hinting, that they had no intention of suggesting I should be the one to help. They were simply telling it like it is--they didn't have any cat litter, they were out of toilet paper, and had enough coffee left for half a pot--but they were getting paid tomorrow.

To be quite frank, I don't generally intend to communicate in such a way that I would be accused of either whining or being manipulative or controlling. What I usually do intend to do, when I set out to communicate with my fellow human beings, is to tell it like it is. Either that, or make something up that might be entertaining, or throw some light on how it really is.

I'm not saying I'm innocent, like little Andrew (the kid in the photo up top). I'm just not guilty as charged, in the way I've been charged. I'm guilty of wanting to be accepted, I'm guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve, I'm guilty of being afraid bad things will happen, and using a variety of tactics to try to prevent this. I am not guilty of wanting everything the way I want it, except insofar as--as I've just said, I want to prevent bad things from happening. Of course, healthy people KNOW they can't prevent bad things from happening; they "let go and let God," and they are not accused of being manipulative. When the unpreventable bad things happen, they don't whine. They know that nothing in this world happens by accident, they know there is a greater purpose to all they see happening--either that or they believe in Murphy's Law and in some funny way they are comfortable with it. They can laugh about it.

Maybe the more words I use, the farther I get from making my meaning clear. I'll remind myself that less is more next time. But for now, it will have to suffice that my words are beyond sufficiency. I love my friends but sometimes it seems this is so irrelevant I might as well not mention it. I don't mean from my point of view.

---Harriet.