The sun and moon would doubt, they’d immediately go out. William Blake
I know, I know. You are up against it. Life is tough. You just can’t go on. I know, I know. Money’s tight, stress is building, you are angry inside, feeling like a loser, or an imposter. Life’s not right, something is amiss. I know, I know …
We all experience this feeling of despair. And it’s ok. But what isn’t ok is when it becomes a chronic response, a continual feeling of “poor me” of malaise, of a feeling like you are hard done by. Everyone is to blame but yourself … In a word, self-pity.
Don’t go there. Learn to recognize it. Stamp it out at its first faint peep. Then go to sleep - tomorrow’s another day. Subscribe to Flossie’s philosophy - “Don’t fight it. Live it.” She made it to 110 doing just that.
I’ve been around, both the world and the souls of many people. If I’ve come to understand anything, it isn’t that I’m a poet, rather I’m a person who looks at and into the psyche (and then writes about it). My own soul and that of those I encounter. I’m an inner space traveler. The universe is just as big inside and outside - infinity goes on forever on both ends.
And one thing I’ve recognized is that the happiest people are those who don’t have an ounce of self-pity in them. Call them what you want - simple, stoic, Buddhist or bonkers. Whatever you call them, I think they got it made, they’ve conquered a huge beast that makes us suffer so - our wish to flog ourselves, beat ourselves up because deep down we think we deserve it.
You don’t deserve it. Nobody does. If there is any thread running through the 100s of poems I’ve put up here on Naked & Alive since my start last year - it is that. YOU are special.
Now, start working on forever, getting over that self-pity. It’ll all be fine. Find your flow, flow with it, this big puff of life. Enjoy, repose, relax, get out there and BE. Drink your wine in joy and eat your bread in peace, said someone more famous than me.
Ok, end of rant. Enjoy the poem above, that I put into animated/visual form.
“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
Self Pity