BRING ON THE SELF-PITY

Self Pity

I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D. H. Lawrence

In the movie G.I. Jane, the Master Chief Officer shouted D. H. Lawrence’s poem to the trainees while they were performing various grueling exercises.  This same Officer ends up giving G.I. Jane a copy of this poem with a medal of honor since she saved his life.  Initially, I agreed with this kind of commendation.  In fact, as I sat there discouraged by another setback, I thought how I needed to be mentally stronger and that there can be no place for self-pity.    I even reflected on my good fortune that during this long drawn out illness  my optimistic personality has protected me from falling into a lot of self-pity. And yet, I found myself   wondering if there were actually some benefits to self-pity.

There are many strong condemning quotes such as the one from Helen Keller: “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.” And it seems that the famous writer D.H. Lawrence wants his readers to aspire to be more like this small bird who never ”felt sorry for itself”.  Consider this picture:  There is a small bird who is slowly freezing to death, who takes no action to protect itself, who is living fully in that moment and not considering tomorrow, and who finally falls off the bough of the tree to its death.  Is that a picture of how you want to be? Do you want to be like this bird that not only had no self pity but no emotions whatsoever?  Do you want to live in the moment so completely that you don’t consider whether there is something proactive you could do to change your circumstance?  Do you want to lose your mortality and never question whether you have any regrets, whether you have anything to be sorry about?  This bird did not pity itself because it had no aspirations to be anything more than what he was.

If someone surrenders to self-pity, it is because that person is aware that her life is being diminished by some circumstance or by some personality flaw.  Experiencing  self-pity suggests she knows she has so much potential that is not being realized and she wants so much more in her life.  Certainly self-pity can be dangerous just as Elizabeth Eliot claims: “Self pity is  . . a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.” On the other hand, how often have you heard people say that “they got so low there was no where else to go but up?”  Often, during an intense self-pitying phase, that person may look up and say, “Enough.”  It is at that moment when the pain of staying the same is greater than making a change – that’s when  the negative hold of self-pity is broken and something positive from those deep human emotions emerge. What we often miss here is that sinking into a deep self-pitying hold may be the necessary impetus for effective change.   It is in that hole that we have the possibility of becoming a noble creature that the frozen bird could never become by creating something meaningful and significant out of our circumstances.   D. H. Lawrence suffered most of his life and finally died in his early 40’s.  He must have experienced first hand the highs and lows that accompany chronic illness.  Perhaps, he wasn’t edifying that frozen bird, nor suggesting that humans should become more like that frozen bird.  Rather, he may have been revealing the complexities of self-pity especially the  redeeming aspects of our human nature that we would have to give up in order to live the life of a bird.  And perhaps the title is more ironic since the bird is to be pitied since it can’t experience even the “worst” of emotions:  self – pity!!