Delighting in Misery?

Aha. Evil ones, art thou guilty of delighting in thy own misery?

Sounds illogical, doesn't it. But guess what? Most of us are guilty of doing that.

Spot-on! I have no evidence. All I have is "evidence" from my very own circle of friends. I realised that even I myself am guilty of this - whenever someone complains to me about his hapless day, for instance, I start indulging in my own experience of an even more unfortunate nature.

And there, the (all-too) familiar "yah, you know hor, I was so much worse off than you last time!" starts all over again, relentless, unwearied, invigorated by every single account of agony.

The ironic thing is that people seem strangely happy and enthusiastic talking about such supposedly unhappy memories, to the extent that they invalidate the poor soul's feelings.

Yes, it is certainly selfish and insensitive of those who do this, but has anyone ever carefully considered the reason behind this? Why do we like to talk about our past that is supposedly worse-off than the other party's?

Oho. Here it is. Because, much as we appear to make that account as miserable as possible, the truth remains that we are still standing here, unfazed, undaunted, emboldened for the next challenge that comes along our way, whatever it may be. It is an account of victory, not defeat of an even worse ilk, that we delight in and tell.

And there I've got my answer. I happened to think about this just now while typing out some really meaningful quotes from Life of Pi, a very meaningful and interminably interesting book. It surprises me to no end. This author (Yann Martel) is an excellent author. Thanks for lending it to me, Anna =)

As I was saying, I was typing out the quotes, and then IE hung. I must say, BLEAH THE IE. (SH is a good girl who is absolutely not vulgar in any way, and strives to be a gentle and virtuous fair young lady =P) (Ok lah. I'm really not vulgar. Have you heard me utter any vulgarity before? Hmm, besides "shit"? =P)

So there goes my quotes (because Livejournal does not have an auto-save feature like Blogger does. Hah. I remember that I had complained before that I had lost my information on Blogger. They must have heard my cries and changed for my sake =P Oops. I don't have schizophrenia. Oh yah. Schizophrenics don't have insight into their condition, so I'm probably causing you to disbelieve me even more. =P But really, I'm fine. =P). I mean, my effort in typing them out. I was THREE-QUARTERS done, for your information.

Sorry, I sidetracked again. While typing them out, as I was using my heavy stone paperweight to keep the book open (sorry Anna =P) and it almost dropped to the floor where my beautiful (like real) foot happened to be resting on, I was suddenly reminded of someone's experience of having a heavy object create a hairline fracture on his toe, and thought that if the stone were to really drop on my foot and cause immense pain (but of course not a fracture), that person would remind me of his even worse experience and invalidate my (oh, poor soul) complains about my pain.

But perhaps there would be some sort of making up eventually. Haha.

Oh yes, I was saying that I've got the answer to my question. Typing things out/talking to myself really helps. Haha.