The Discontentment of Those
Who believe the world revolves around them
"Just because someone thinks that the world revolves around them, doesn't mean that they're happy about it."
~Sloane Crosby
I read this quote today, as I am making my way through Grief is for People. Crosby wrote this after the suicide of her friend, Russell.
Reading it, I thought about my father, my brother, and my narcissistic ex-partner. I thought about a friend whose mother exhibits narcissistic tendencies as well.
Despite the self-centeredness, the grandiosity and arrogance of some of people who display narcissistic tendencies, I thought about how true it is that, underneath it all, they are often very, very unhappy people. Shameful of their own mediocrity, or mentally ill, or depressed, etc.
I get that the quote could be read like— well, if they’re not so happy about their own self-centered universe, then why would they be that way? Why not change?
I consider the life stories of my father and brother. Both were very self-indulgent and their spending habits, the financial abuse of their mothers, was quite severe.
And yet—
At the end of their lives, before their final act, their grand finales, they did display not only great humility but deep shame and self-loathing.
I heard my brother blame himself for everything in his failed marriage.
I read my father’s self-hatred and condemning himself, for his own terrible life decisions and relapse, as he dove back into active alcohol addiction.
It was like their fragile exteriors, the outer shells, had finally cracked open. The facade no longer possible, at their shameful nougat center came oozing forth.
And it was too much for them. They didn’t know how to live. Or to live with themselves in this world.
I feel desperately sorry, a deep heartache, for them.
But I also wonder how much of their self-involvement and egocentrism with their partners and as children, to their mothers, was because they were grasping at straws, desperately in need of someone to validate them.
I certainly couldn’t stand both of them at many points, that’s for certain. And it often felt like the more they tried to build themselves up, the more off-putting it became, more aversive.
The white male entitlement:
I think about it, as I consider the ways in which Oluo writes about this self-destructive phenomena that plagues white men. A demographic of people who have been granted so much more than many others. Historically, representing the only race and gender, to receive full citizen rights, in this country. Since its origins, the only group recognized a whole persons.
And yet, despite all of that—
Other than American Indians and Native Hawaiians, due to the destruction of their cultures, and pillaging of their lands—
White men hold the second highest rate of suicide, statistically speaking.
I don’t believe suicide and self-harm is always or even mostly the result of self-loathing. But I do believe that sometimes it can play a role in it.
(Not that it is warranted or rational. Ie—that they should feel that way about themselves.)
After all, Depression fucks with us and mental illnesses create shaken Etch-o-sketches of our minds and reasoning, destabilizing us, mentally, and clouding our idea of any time before and after this state.
But I also think, suicide aside, how many truly self-involved people are just truly miserable people.
The narcissists. The self-boasting and arrogant ones.
The ones who incessantly judge others, even if/when they do it openly or covertly. Gossiping, not talking about people their faces, but to others, behind others backs.
I consider those statistics that suggest that people who are the most compassionate, giving, service-oriented, community-focused individuals in heart and relationships, are also the most fulfilled, because of their altruism,
So, then—
It also only stands to reason that the opposite thereof would be some pretty sad and sorry folks.
While it doesn’t excuse folks for whom the world revolves around, but it does—at least for me—cast a different light on them. And it produces in me a tremendous amount of pity for them.