May 6, 2007: A Little Self Pity Is OK

Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:

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.

The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.

The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"

But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!

Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.

My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.