Category: truth hurts

I don’t pretend to be an expert in self-growth, but I do know that no real growth can take place when it is smothered with self-pity, victim playing, and a refusal to accept responsibility for your own decisions and actions. It is impossible to move forward if you have cemented yourself to the past and insist on begging everyone to feel sorry for you and watch you bleed from wounds you tore open yourself.

I suspect that’s the ulterior motive for some people. If you package yourself as a perpetual victim, then you don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to actually do anything at all. You can whine, complain, sob, whimper, and moan, which is a hell of a lot easier than taking a good, honest look in the mirror and tackling the hard work of change and improvement. You can sit back and wallow in the sympathy and hand-holding of enablers instead of being an adult.

To me, that is failure. But for someone who never intends to change, who only wants attention and drama, who just wants to brush off responsibility by pointing at others and bitching their way through life, I guess that’s considered success, in a pathetic sort of way.

When your heart festers with lies, bitterness, jealousy, and pettiness, it’s absurd to pretend that the real problem is anyone or anything else. In fact, it’s downright stupid. When your norm in all aspects of life is chaos, conflict, and combat, you have got to stop denying the truth: the common denominator is you. Only a fiercely immature and unlikeable person is incapable of self-examination and unaccepting of any responsibility in his or her choices in life.

Again, I don’t pretend to be perfect. I don’t have it all figured out. Recently I found myself slipping back into old habits, and I started leaning on worn-out excuses: I work a lot. I’m tired. I deserve a break. Blah blah blah. I refused to accept that from myself. Have I worked so hard to make positive changes in my life, in me, just to regress to unhelpful and negative choices? I matter too much to me to do that. My loved ones matter too much to me to do that.

I suspect I have stumbled across another key point: when you simply don’t care about anyone but yourself, then you are not motivated to do better or to be better for them. They are not worth the effort. I am grateful that I am not in that position. I am sorry for anyone who chooses to remain in a state of interminable rot, with pity and drama filling their lives instead of true caring or meaningful relationships. I could never settle for that, but clearly, some people can. They will never know what they are missing, but I do.