A few days ago, I was walking down a promenade street. The street is on a very, very gentle slope. There was a little girl, maybe six years old, riding a little bicycle up the street towards me.
She started veering left and right on her bike. The gentle slope was getting to her. She came to a stop.
“Oof,” she said, “I just cannot… ride… any further.”
And she passed the back of her hand across her forehead, the way I guess she has seen her mom do a million times.
Then she looked around to see if any of her family were there to witness her suffering. But they were too far down the street, and they were busy talking to each other.
For some reason, this scene got me thinking about the exquisite pleasure of feeling sorry for yourself. Perhaps because self-pity is an emotion I indulge in pretty often.
I was wondering what it is. Why is it such a pleasurable sensation? After all, self-pity seems to be completely self-defeating.
Maybe you have an explanation for me. The best that I could come up with is that self-pity, like so much of the human brain, can be explained by our prime directive to think less.
Like for example, how we rely on social proof, so we don’t have to investigate and make up our own minds.
Or how we jump to extremes so we can ignore the full spectrum of options. Like my favorite question, “What’s your number one tip for succeeding as a copywriter?”
And this same drive to think less is why I figure we feel pleasure when we feel sorry for ourselves. Because it’s pleasurable to come to a stop when the going stops being fast, cheap, or easy.
All of which might sound like I’m getting cynical on you, or that I’m trying to bring you down.
No. Quite the opposite.
Because I have this belief that, while we come preprogrammed into life… and while we remain highly programmable throughout life by outside influence… we also have individual agency.
In other words, you might often find yourself giving in to self-pity. But you don’t have to give in — at least not every time, and not in the long term.
Like that little girl on the bike, you can face forward again, exhale with resignation, set your sights on the top of the street, put your hands back on the handle bars, and start pedaling again, back up the gentle slope.
On the topic of bicycling:
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