On Emotional Masochism (and why continuing the cycle is selfish)

Have you ever noticed how there are some people who seem to enjoy their own misery? It seems like someone who was nearly halfway as miserable as they say they are would go out of their way to avoid the people or things or places that upset them, yet they appear to want nothing more than to repeatedly wallow in things they know will do nothing more than depress them.

I just don't get it. Do people not realize that continuing to pick at scabs does not help them heal. It's not like the treatment for the flu is more flu virus or the treatment of post-war PTSD is to put people back in combat. You heal better and faster if you don't just keep poking the same old wounds. If you insist on doing that, there's a part of you (a part big enough to overcome your urge for emotional self-preservation) that for some reason (guilt, self-disgust, or irrational belief that things will suddenly change) wants to continue to suffer. And if that's the case, you have no right to be depressed.

When you're at the point when you're hurting or upsetting the people around you by your bad mood [which you will, because people who care about you are always going to be impacted by your emotions (you treat people worse, are less personable, and generally drain good moods when you are depressed)], it becomes selfish to continue to wallow in your own misery. To quote a terrible commercial, "Who does depression hurt? Everyone." Everyone who comes into contact with a depressed person suffers, so continuing to depress yourself when you could very easily desist the behavior which causes the depression is incredibly unfair to anyone who cares about you.

Cynically yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Love and Selfishness

In Bokononism, they have a term: a sin-wat. A sin-wat is a person who is greedy and wants all of a person's love, which is, according to the ideals of Bokononism, meant for everyone and meant to be shared. Unless, of course, you exist in a duprass, in which case, you have much bigger problems than wanting all of someone's love.

But this term brings me to today's thought. Is love selfish? Does love have a right to be selfish? Do you have to be truly selfish to really love someone else? And is it wrong to want all of someone's love to yourself?

I used to promote myself as a Bokononist. It's a religion (stemming from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle) surrounding the ideals of pleasure, free love, and living by the innocent lies which allow you to be happy. One of the major ideals of this hedonistic view is very similar to the slogan of Huxley's Brave New World: that "Everyone belongs to everyone else."

I guess, recently, I've deviated from this ideal, because I've started to want very much to become the sin-wat that Mona Aamons Manzano would hate. A friend of mine said that to love anyone, you had to be selfish to truly want to make them happy: that to be in love, you had to put your interests, and thus the interests of your greatest interest (them), above anything or anyone else.

Aside from that, they say you have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone. Isn't narcissism inherently selfish?

So does love really require selfishness and greed? Or is love meant to be shared and spread? Should we or should we not be sin-wats? Is it fair to categorically decide that?

I'm still not sure.

With love,
Rachel Leigh

On Honesty

Here's a fairly simple question with what I fear is a fairly complex answer: At what point does honesty become selfish?

My first instinct is to say that honesty is never selfish, because people lie to cover their own flaws, and so therefore, when they tell the truth, they expose themselves to criticism, drama, and hatred.

But I don't think that's true, completely. At first, lying is caused by an urge to mask one's flaws. But the need to confess your sins comes later: when the guilt from your web of lies and secrets finally overrides the shame and negative consequences you anticipate for yourself when your secrets are revealed. The people who have gotten to this point, however, find themselves in a peculiar situation: when you have lied for months or years or weeks or decades, exposing that lie hurts everyone in its presence.

I know. I hurt someone who cares very much about me, and now feels they cannot trust me, because I kept a secret for months and then decided to suddenly drop it with no regard for their feelings. I did it to clear my guilty conscience, to make my life easier, and to make myself feel better about the things I had done. But all it did was hurt other people.

Maybe you're supposed to suffer a guilty conscience when you've done something wrong and lied about it. Maybe it's supposed to keep you up at night, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep and unable to bear being awake. Maybe that's your punishment for lying or cheating or stabbing someone in the back. And then, being honest to clear yourself of guilt you deserve, of suffering you've earned: that's just selfish. You'll hurt everyone in your path, and that's wrong. You have no right to ruin lives or break hearts or hurt others to clear your own soul.

So I suppose honesty can be selfish. Some secrets are better off kept, because opening up can mean opening up old wounds, creating new ones, or rubbing salt in ones that were just ready to heal. So either be honest from the start, or take your secrets to the grave.

I'll Keep You My Dirty Little Secret,
Rachel Leigh