It is new years eve and I have just returned from a short Christmas vacation that I spent with family. I am trying not to dwell on the fact that I am doing nothing this new years but sitting at home, watching movies and reading. I have no idea why such things would bother me internally, but it does for some reason. I have never really been one for partying on new years, it was always something low key and it never bothered me before. Sometimes I would spend my time with family, sometimes with friends watching the new years ball drop on TV, but this year it feels different. This year, for some reason, I crave going out and doing something interesting. Perhaps I crave the high intensity of a party, perhaps I crave the dressing up and feeling like I am sharing some moment with a group of people, or perhaps I just want to be able to say I did something for new years.
I am different this holiday season. It feels like my eyes have been open to people's suffering and neuroses. I feel like everyone, in some way, has some past traumatic experiences that they are trying to desperately manage, control or cope with. It is astonishing how many words and deeds are done with an effort to maintain one's own self esteem, at great costs to others and ourselves. What are the costs? We tend to become more narcissistic, self involved, self righteously angry, defensive, manipulative and more likely to blame others for our emotions and failings. All of this in an effort to feel good about ourselves. This is not the type of person I want to become. I want to recognize my own and others fragility, I want to be kind, compassionate, and warm. I certainly don't want to be humble and self depreciating but I want to build myself up, love myself and accept myself. I want to be self compassionate, but oh my god is it hard within the contemporary cultural climate. We live in a society that suggests a large ego, an inflated sense of self worth, and a high self esteem are the key to happiness with oneself. But this "happiness" has it's own drawbacks with how we engage with the world; in short, we seem to engage with it less realistically, and more in terms of our schemas we set up for ourselves. We don't let information in that could be potentially damaging towards our self esteem, but we also avoid tasks and goals that we may fail at. We cling to our generalizations about others to make ourselves feel evaluatively better, more unique and more ambitious than everyone else. Self compassion is an attempt to abandon this way of engaging with the world, it stops the evaluations we give about others and ourselves, and recognizes our shared humanity. We start engaging with ourselves like a friend and encourage ourselves to seek that which makes us happy and be kind to ourselves when we fail. It is a difficult thing to get a hang of, this thing called "self compassion", but nonetheless I hope and believe it is a much better alternative than seeking and maintaining a high self esteem.
I am different this holiday season. It feels like my eyes have been open to people's suffering and neuroses. I feel like everyone, in some way, has some past traumatic experiences that they are trying to desperately manage, control or cope with. It is astonishing how many words and deeds are done with an effort to maintain one's own self esteem, at great costs to others and ourselves. What are the costs? We tend to become more narcissistic, self involved, self righteously angry, defensive, manipulative and more likely to blame others for our emotions and failings. All of this in an effort to feel good about ourselves. This is not the type of person I want to become. I want to recognize my own and others fragility, I want to be kind, compassionate, and warm. I certainly don't want to be humble and self depreciating but I want to build myself up, love myself and accept myself. I want to be self compassionate, but oh my god is it hard within the contemporary cultural climate. We live in a society that suggests a large ego, an inflated sense of self worth, and a high self esteem are the key to happiness with oneself. But this "happiness" has it's own drawbacks with how we engage with the world; in short, we seem to engage with it less realistically, and more in terms of our schemas we set up for ourselves. We don't let information in that could be potentially damaging towards our self esteem, but we also avoid tasks and goals that we may fail at. We cling to our generalizations about others to make ourselves feel evaluatively better, more unique and more ambitious than everyone else. Self compassion is an attempt to abandon this way of engaging with the world, it stops the evaluations we give about others and ourselves, and recognizes our shared humanity. We start engaging with ourselves like a friend and encourage ourselves to seek that which makes us happy and be kind to ourselves when we fail. It is a difficult thing to get a hang of, this thing called "self compassion", but nonetheless I hope and believe it is a much better alternative than seeking and maintaining a high self esteem.