“I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!” --Fyodor Dostevsky, “Notes From Underground”
There are many instances in our lives which when looked back upon bring about fond or not so fond memories, making us smile, laugh, cry or shudder with a severe kind of numbing embarrassment. Indeed, I quite recently I had a incident like the latter, one which will haunt me for a good few days anyway. It really isn’t that big of a deal, yet it was enough of one that I took notice and found myself wanting to find a way to reduce the chances of such a gross overreaction ever happening again.
Truth be told, recently I have been a kind of a jerk and my temper seems to fly wildly out of control, more so than I have experienced within my life prior to about three months ago, though admittedly this anger was more perpetual within me than it is currently. The whole thing centered around one of my inanimate arch nemesis’s: the fireplace pellet.
While accompanying a friend to a grocery store to get pellets for her fireplace, I thought I would carry the bags of pulp morsels to her vehicle. However, it seems I not only underestimated their weight, but their bulk, which made carrying these impossible (for me anyway for I am a complete pantywaist to begin with).
In the process of figuring this out, which probably wasn’t as sharp of a mental operation as it might have been otherwise, due to the “couple beers” I had. Whatever the case, drunk or stupid, or both, I momentarily struggled, when the cashier and the woman behind my friend suggested I grab a cart. Now, you would think they would find this pathetic display to be quite comical, yet it was the opposite. For some reason they were rather aggravated and quite, almost, angry.
Lets just say I didn’t respond in a healthy manner, mentally or for my back. My reaction, in retrospect, is more embarrassing than the actual fireplace feed fumbling. If I didn’t look like a moron yet, I was quickly about to, for I lifted the bags awkwardly against my chest and struggled towards the nearest door, my fingertips digging into the plastic sack. I half expected the bags to come tearing open, dumping the contents all over the floor. I suspect I would have been so embarrassed, I would have wept freely at that point and relocated in shame to some compound high in the mountains and deep in the woods, shying away from all men and cursing the day I ever walked into QFC.
So, if I would have just accepted their help, I could have walked out with my head held high, but I didn’t. Not only did I not, but I also got angry at the very mention of help, though their rudeness certainly had something to do with that and instead of stopping the spectacle, I made it worse by letting my frustration and anger get the best of me.
Today when recalling the episode, it makes me just shake my head with an uncomfortable chagrin and my mind moved to pondering the reaction. Sure, I could have just shrugged it off as a product of alcohol, but with my recent trip to Alaska, I have come to recall even incidence up there of similar reactions, where I would be on a certain task and receive instruction or constructive criticism concerning my duties. I reacted in much the same way, in fact, in spite, gleefully and angrily displaying a prominent disobedient disregard for the instruction. If it weren’t for these other circumstances, again, I just would continue shaking my head and the incident would have sunk into the recesses of my mind to be uncovered by some future therapist at a later date.
This being the case, what could I conclude were some of the contributing factors to my behavior? Dostoevsky is by far my favorite writer. The philosophy, psychology and theological themes contained within his well constructed prose never fail to pull me in. A running theme in many of his narratives is the psychological relationship between shame and pride. Moreover, Dostoevsky shows how these two seemingly contradictory views of the self can, either by themselves, or by interacting with the other affect our behavior. Certainly, I believe that both of these states conflicted in me at the time of the infamous “pellet incident,” but more so pride was evident.
With this identified, it got me to pondering the nature of pride and have found pride to be a volatile fragile viewpoint, which is almost the complete antithesis of what one might think. The ultimate paradox of the whole thing is that the greater the pride, the greater the opportunity to have it wounded, which directly breeds spite. This, I believe, was the process at work when I spazzed out in front of a friend and two complete strangers.
Both pride and shame threaten to change our perceptions of the world and how people view us. Often we deceive ourselves into thinking we are despised or even exalted in the eyes of others. Thus, our interactions in the world and even the friends we keep, or don’t keep, is reciprocal to how we view ourselves.
Yet, why is pride bad? Is it a bad thing to be proud of the things we do and accomplishment? No, of course not, this in itself is not a bad thing. Accomplishment and productivity are great things and the danger lies not in this but in the perversion of this view. We are not to twist our view of what we have done, not done, who we are, who we aren’t, and then juxtapose it with the accomplishments of others. This is where pride becomes unhealthy and a lot of mistreatment of peers and people in general comes from these underlying point of views.
Simply, I took great pride in the work of my own hands and what I had accomplished, but when I carried that into public and interacted with people, there was an inherent comparison there which resulted in an excessive anger in me. Not that I always keep it in remembrance or I was taking pride in juggling fireplace pellets, no. Rather, that in a continuum of hard work, I learned that challenging or pushing myself fed my pride and gave me means to raise myself up conceptually above others. So I guess subconsciously, when people rebuke me or offer instruction, it as if I have failed, which leads to shame. However, often times we use emotion as a defense against pain and when one spends much of his life in shame and finds pride, one such as me will use emotion to guard against shame from creeping in. As said earlier, the greater the pride, the greater the chances to have it wounded, meaning one will have to put on a bigger defense, become more sensitive and prone to anger as their pride grows.
So how to guard against this is the newest challenge. I have come to the realization that I lack a humility when it comes to viewing other people. Humbleness is not necessarily considering yourself lower than other people, for this can be dangerous at times, false, or lead to a sinking despair. Instead, to be humble in the healthiest of ways is to not compare yourself to people at all. Granted this a fine line to walk.
So back to the incident. I had failed at a mundane task, but how dare two people at QFC point out my fault. Who the hell do they think they are? Do they not know the things I have accomplished?
What a bastard I am! Yes, they were rude, but rudeness doesn’t have to go both ways, for that in itself would be pride talking. Rather, I should have moved on, accepted the help and then I could have spent tonight not pondering psychological questions, but goofing off on Facebook or something.
I don’t expect my behavior to change right away, but I expect that I will work on it. That’s really why I am writing this in the first place, that if it is written and posted, it may produce a conviction and accountability that will carry on long after the embarrassment has faded. To change such things like ones behavior, is not an easy thing, and not like, to use a cliché metaphor, flipping on and off a light switch, but one must go into training in order for the culmination of desire and conviction to come to pass.
Or it could have been the fact I was drunk.
Drive carefully. It is not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.............................................
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