Are You a Proud Sufferer?

Sometimes we cling to the strangest things… including some weird and destructive ideas about ourselves that can be self-fulfilling.

The most common of these is the pride that many of us take in our past suffering. I’ve done it myself many times, and so have you. There’s probably only a 50/50 chance that you’re conscious of it, but you’ve done it.

It ties into the familiar “life lesson” concept – we do learn more quickly under the more intense energy of negative life issues. Therefore, we may choose to attract negative learning experiences on purpose.

But: life really isn’t meant to be a chore. Even school kids get recess, and go home to play.

So if you cling to past afflictions and use them to prove how strong you are, you not only endured those past heartaches but you carry them with you long after they’re resolved.

Why would you do this?

• It reminds you of something you “conquered”, and thus can be proud of having survived. Umm…hello? Of course you survived! Unless it was a battle with a real live dragon or a horrific accident, you were going to survive anyhow. Surviving doesn’t make you special.

• It helps you with human connections and the herd instinct. Just mention some past trial or tribulation, and you’re guaranteed to elicit a similar story from a nearby listener. It’s like one of my favorite Monty Python skits (“That’s nothing. Why, when I was a wee lad we lived at the bottom of a lake!”). You’re both in the club of proud sufferers, and out-doing the others on the past-pain scale is usually in play.

• Examples from others. If you’re surrounded by proud sufferers, birds of a feather, etc. Don’t matter how much perfume you use; if you’re in a cow barn you’re going to eventually smell like a cow barn.

• Habit.

All of this pretty much boils down to one thing: you want to feel special in some way. You haven’t yet completely understood that you are exactly as you “should” be in this moment, and that your value doesn’t depend on what you’ve done or been through, or how smart you are or how pretty or rich. You are an orange and the next guy or girl is an apple. (I thought it would be cool to work “juicy” in here somewhere, but I in fact hate the word when it’s used in an article like this. :) )

Kicking the Habit...

This need to compare yourself to others in order to feel your individuality is an illusion, and it’s lodged in the mass consciousness. The ironic part about that is that the more you that you become, and the less plugged-in to a corrupted local mass consciousness matrix, the more you’ll realize that there is no need to be special… no better nor worse. Plus,keeping those old hurts front and center is only going to get in your way, and maybe even continue to attract the same. You learned the lesson; get over it and move on.
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There was once a civilization with a warrior class who were an arm of the priestly hierarchy. The warrior class had a tradition: in honor of their fallen brethren, they did not allow their wounds to heal until the war was over. They scraped them open as a reminder of the suffering of their comrades.
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Kick the habit. Hold the lessons learned from past travails and shed the rest. It’s not serving you.