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Old 06-19-2015, 07:25 AM
 
Location: The Hall of Justice
25,901 posts, read 42,622,264 times
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I belonged to a small message board about 10 years ago, and I posted about a time when a female stranger helped me at an opportune moment. It was a silly thing (helping me so I didn't miss a bus), but the scenario was odd enough that it felt like someone was looking out for me. I posted about it and blithely asked if the rest of them believed in angels or divine intervention. Another woman there, someone I liked and admired, had lost her 21-year-old son to leukemia the year before. It was only about six months between when he got sick and they found out until he died. She answered me bluntly that she prayed every day, all day, for her son to live and no, she did not believe a ******* angel appeared just to help me catch a bus while she was ignored. I had no idea until that moment what a self-absorbed thing it was to say, but I sure notice it now.
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Old 06-19-2015, 07:57 AM
 
Location: USA
18,461 posts, read 9,106,258 times
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I almost always feel worse after spending time on Facebook. So I don't do it anymore.
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Old 06-19-2015, 08:15 AM
 
Location: Middle Earth
951 posts, read 1,137,422 times
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OP, I can see where you are coming from. I wanted a child for nearly 10 years and I watched many people have their 1st, 2nd, heck 20th baby, and I felt I was left behind. I am not religious by any means, but I would say I'm spiritual and like to believe there are higher powers. Well, all those years that I couldn't get pregnant, some would just say I didn't pray enough or that maybe I was cursed, etc. It did question my faith in a lot of things.

Once I did finally have a child, I spent the first few years posting details about my son on FB. I just felt so happy and blessed, I couldn't help it. I often share my story to give others hope, but in no way, did I ever mean to rub it off on people and try to make them feel bad; I know that all too well. It's what you make of it-- "change your thoughts and you change your world" kind of way. Your cousin was just happy and she finally found her happiness.
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Old 06-19-2015, 08:18 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,361,179 times
Reputation: 9822
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
As someone who has frequently been in LowOnLuck's shoes, this is my take on things:

I think you're right about wanting people to know - and more importantly, to understand - the pain some people go through. Unfortunately, more times than not, people interpret it as sour grapes (as mordant said) or someone with a "woe is me" attitude.
I would ask you to remember, S, that I have had my share of misfortune and have borne my share of witness to exactly the things you are talking about here, so I am far from unsympathetic to your points, or even really to the OP's expressed feelings.

It is hard sometimes to thread the needle in this regard. On the one hand, it's manifestly obvious that existence is completely and utterly indifferent to my, your, everyone's hopes / dreams / aspirations. It plays no favorites. Evolution optimizes for survival, not for enjoyment. That is why we have such a strong instinct for self preservation, such a strong distaste for non-existence, and such a huge ability to adapt, physically and mentally, to all sorts of suboptimal situations, even while at times wondering why we bother.

Because of this indifference, there is no point bemoaning (un)fairness. Everyone experiences it, and frankly, no one is all that impressed with the unfairness of life toward others. Most of us have enough of our own disappointments to deal with. I note that no one cares to listen to me whine, and I tend to match that level of interest in others. Much as you might or might not like me in some ways, if all I did day in and day out is whine about all the unwanted drama and frustration in my life, you, compassionate and nice as you clearly are, would have to tune me out in self defense. You'd say, in essence, "get a room for your pity party, dude".

The truth is that for most of my life, I've been something of an empath, who tends to feel the anguish of the world. I have just gotten to the point where I see it accomplishing precisely nothing other than making me unhappy and negative. I have had to become, so to speak, less porous. I can't save the world. I can scarcely save myself. Trust me, not infrequently I think of you and your neurological condition, of my wife and her end-stage arthritis, of my late wife and her years of unremitting neuroimmune-mediated suffering, of my son and his unfixable personality disorder, of my still-living first wife who, after all, I loved deeply once, and how she languishes in a Thorazine haze in the county mental health system, head-bombed into indifference toward life, and then I think of how her indifference toward life includes her children and how that has effected them, and therefore, me. And I think of all the high-minded ideals of my former theistic belief-system and how it all counted for precisely zero in regards to any of this. Less than zero, really, because often it made matters worse by limiting my ability to act rationally.

All that said, I completely agree with you that no one should demand that you or I paste an immutable grinning rictus on our face and act like life is some kind of lottery-win. Life is NOT a rational proposition. It's a rationalizable proposition for some of us, based more on dumb luck than we want to admit. For others, we have to contemplate sometimes whether we even want to have more experiences or not. I get that. I have been there. I will be there again.

I do not expect you, the OP or anyone else to be joyous and thrilled with existence, though of course if you are, that is fine too, especially if you don't drift into gloating and self-congratulations about it. All I'm really suggesting is that you not resent others for being richer, healthier, more self-actualized or whatever, because after all, that's what you want for yourself, too.

Where resentment is understandable of course if when someone who is enjoying life is doing so at your expense by suggesting that their good fortune is actually their personal brilliance and correctness and self discipline -- which means that your misfortune is in some sense your fault, and usually, ultimately, ALL your fault. This lack of humility and compassion is what you are really on about, I suspect. You're too mature to think your life literally unfair, to think yourself literally picked upon. You're better than that. You just don't want people lording it over you and blaming you. You want compassion, acceptance, and community. You don't want to be denied the milk of human kindness because some aspects of your existence reminds others of the inescapable truth that everything you love and care about can be taken from you at any time, for any reason or for no reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
I think it's interesting that the OP had this issue on Facebook because studies have been done showing how active participation on FB actually causes depression. Someone called it "Fakebook" whereas I call it "Bragbook" ... and both names are equally accurate. The depression stems from sitting there reading, day after day, the accomplishments of friends and acquaintances -- things you probably wouldn't have heard about before FB existed. Now, though, even the tiniest joys of others are dutifully polished up and presented to the world. If your life isn't all that great, reading about everyone else's happiness can make one feel alone. I mean really, really alone. It can also make you feel persecuted somehow -- even if you don't believe in God.
I hear you. And that is why I so disapprove of my daughter's use of FB as I mentioned in another post in this thread. Social media is a terribly shallow place, and FB is in my mind the worst of them. It is a place where people make these who-cares, "I ate a banana and took a crap" types of posts as if it's actually relevant or important, and everyone knows they are showing themselves in the best possible light and that no one actually cares about their self-absorbed stream-of-consciousness.

As her health deteriorated, social media was my late wife's only escape from the grind of her existence, and it wasn't much of an improvement. Sometimes I would stagger out of bed at 2 am to find her in the cold glow of her computer screen, looking wistfully at a world that had moved on. So trust me, I know how painful that is, at least as much as I can without being personally quite that constrained at the time ... my wife was good enough to boot me out of the house every morning and insist I have coffee with some other old farts and forget our dreary mutual existence for at least an hour each day. She did not have even that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
I know, even for myself, I'd be up at 3am and in agony because that night the meds weren't working for whatever reason. I used to go to FB but I quit doing that because no one is really interested in hearing me gripe about how much I hurt -- and I'm never going to have happy-happy joy-joy vacations, job promotions, financial windfalls, children to dote on and whom I can chronicle their every breath, and I'm not be-bopping to some exotic place this summer where I can use up half the available bandwidth uploading dozens of awesome photos. No, I'll just be sitting in a room, alone, and hurting like a son of a female dog. Yeah, that can really crawl under your skin after a time, sitting there reading everyone else's happiness and seeing everyone else's photos while you remain miserable day after day.
When I was constrained by pretty much unremitting joint pain, it did not bother me that other people were relatively healthy, nor do I suspect that in itself bothers you. What bothered me was people patting themselves on the back because in their view they had that relative health because god approved of them, or because they were smarter / better than me in some way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
It really makes you wonder: What the hell did I ever do to deserve this? Where's my piece of the pie?
You did nothing to deserve it. Or at least no more than anyone else does in their imperfect human way. I go through this with my current wife about once a week. "Am I bringing this stuff on myself somehow? Why does it keep happening?" It is an understandable question, and not even entirely invalid. Sometimes we DO act as our own worst enemy. But the truth in her case is it's mostly genetics and family-of-origin dysfunction and bad luck. And my guess is that in your case you've made no material contribution to your situation either. It's just tragic, horrible bad luck.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
Thus when someone starts yammering about how "God has a plan" for their oh so happy lives, that makes dealing with the depression many orders of magnitude more difficult. Why? Well, it's one thing if someone says that they're simply being rewarded for genuine hard work. Sometimes it's even okay if a person admits they were just super-lucky.

But when people start bloviating about how "God chose them" and how grand it is -- when they start having diarrhea of the mouth about how God gave them a great job, God gave them a soulmate, God made them so happy, and yada-blah-yappity, then yeah, it's easy to feel resentful. If they were chosen by God to be happy, does that mean God chose you to be miserable? Now you're no longer talking about dumb luck but rather a supposedly benign intelligence making conscious and deliberate decisions -- often unfair decisions -- about how your own life is going to play out. You, apparently, have been put here on this earth to suffer, watching others frolick in a sun-dappled flowery meadow while you get to wallow in a garbage pit.
I understand and agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
I know this only too well because I'm convinced I fall into the "cursed" category. Not only is it a lonely place to be, it's also an exhausting way to live knowing your life allows no margin for error. Even apparent successes often come back around to bite you square in the ass. For instance, most people would consider getting accepted to grad school and earning a masters degree a success -- and it is. BUT, it becomes a failure if you're like me who gets struck down with a debilitating and incurable medical condition the same month you graduate which means your diploma becomes a useless piece of paper on the wall AND you're tens of thousands in debt AND the government doctors who examine you for a disability claim tell you openly that having a masters degree will make it more difficult for your claim to be accepted.
Our broken disability system is broke in more ways than that, as you doubtless already know. My wife had to endure mental health evaluations every 2 or 3 years and lived in terror of happening upon some idiot evaluator who would declare her a malingerer. Fortunately it never happened. The last one actually said that she's saner than he (the evaluator) would be in her shoes. Once in awhile you get some respect, even from the system. But you can never count on it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
The perfect storm, however, is when a "cursed" person knows a "blessed" person. Yeah. That's when the fireworks explode. What's worse for the cursed person is that no one really believes your luck is actually that bad even when they see it happening with their own eyes. This is a very real problem for exceptionally unlucky people because we need a lot of help getting through life yet few are willing to give it because the constant fails are perceived to be caused by laziness, lack of assertiveness, or making stupid decisions. But it HAS to be your fault somehow and even if they can't really find the smoking gun that incriminates you, people will still insist that you zigged when you should have zagged SOMEwhere in the chain of events, so yeah ... good luck with that.
You just have to walk away from those idiots, although IIRC in your situation you are forced to live with at least one. That can't be good.

Should this thread be in psychology or relationships? Perhaps, although I would argue that much of what we are talking about here is religion-enabled and religion-mediated. What, aside from the notion that god blesses the good and curses the wicked, would enable such disordered thinking, even if indirectly? Even new-agers can be like this. The "you create your own reality types" (e.g., The Secret) can be just as cruel as evangelicals ... even more so. If you create your own reality then your reality is entirely your responsibility / fault.

Shirina, in summation just let me say I have never known you to display schadenfreude. Or even self pity, to any degree that matters. I took the OP as rather schadenfreude-laden and perhaps that was presumptuous of me.

Today I'm on the tail end of a nasty virus and I woke up with my eyes glued shut and beet red. As I staggered off to the drug store for some boric acid wash and TheraTears, my wife put her hand on my shoulder and said, "you poor man". And I appreciated that expression of caring and empathy. But other times she just shrugs and suggests I suck it up, and she's usually right in which way she goes. Sometimes I am whining to no good purpose. Today I wasn't whining, just squinting.

My wife and I have earned the right to kick each other in the touche once in awhile. For the most part I haven't earned that right with anyone here. If I have bounded over my steps ... er, overstepped my bounds ... with the OP, I would ask the OP to not wear the shoe if it doesn't fit, but at the same time to be very self aware of her motivations and thinking so as not to needlessly harm herself and others. That is all. At my most judgmental I would not assume the OP is where she is because she's somehow defective.
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Old 06-19-2015, 08:26 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,361,179 times
Reputation: 9822
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustJulia View Post
I belonged to a small message board about 10 years ago, and I posted about a time when a female stranger helped me at an opportune moment. It was a silly thing (helping me so I didn't miss a bus), but the scenario was odd enough that it felt like someone was looking out for me. I posted about it and blithely asked if the rest of them believed in angels or divine intervention. Another woman there, someone I liked and admired, had lost her 21-year-old son to leukemia the year before. It was only about six months between when he got sick and they found out until he died. She answered me bluntly that she prayed every day, all day, for her son to live and no, she did not believe a ******* angel appeared just to help me catch a bus while she was ignored. I had no idea until that moment what a self-absorbed thing it was to say, but I sure notice it now.
I think many people, like you, mean well but don't realize how self-absorbed and insensitive they are. Kudos to you for being able to undefensively take it on board, and even share it to help others. Which just goes to prove you are not a fundamentally self-absorbed person, you are one who is constantly improving.
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Old 06-19-2015, 08:28 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,361,179 times
Reputation: 9822
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freak80 View Post
I almost always feel worse after spending time on Facebook. So I don't do it anymore.
I go on there about once a month, mainly because I would not know much about my daughter's life if I didn't as she has decided this is how she's going to interact with everyone. And often what I find out is not something I am better off for knowing, anyway.

So like you, I have gone from FB being a mindless diversion, to it being a source of dread. Last year I even shut the account down for about 6 months.
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Old 06-19-2015, 09:23 AM
 
Location: Iowa, USA
6,542 posts, read 4,083,065 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LowonLuck View Post
So my cousin posts on facebook that one year from today she will marry her best friend, and how lucky for her that this was gods plan for her.

So was it his plan for me to have one man die, one abuse me, one cheat on me, to leave me a single parent of two kids?

Really? Why do people say sucky things?
People who have been blessed with luxury and good fortune like to believe it happened because someone thinks they deserve it. It's a delusion because it makes no sense. Those people will thank God for helping victims of an earthquake but blame humanity for sin which brought on the earthquake. It's a major logical failure that is too often ignored so people who have a lot can feel that they earned it.

There is no plan. Even if there is a God, there is no plan, and if there is, God is neither loving nor benevolent. He's the embodiment of evil if this is what he planned. People torture and kill people in mass numbers, and we're supposed to just say 'God works in mysterious ways?' because you have food on your table?

So, that's why they say things like that. To feel important.
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Old 06-19-2015, 09:30 AM
 
19,942 posts, read 17,136,666 times
Reputation: 2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead View Post



Thank God I'm not him oh Lord, Thank you , Thank you !!!
We just studied through Matthew 20 the other night in our men's Bible study. Included in the text were a few stories, but one was the parable of the landowner who paid all of his workers the same, regardless of the number of hours they worked. Many of them resented the ones that did less work for the same money.

In another story, we read of the mother of James and John requesting a special place in the Kingdom for her sons. The implication was that they were somehow more deserving of others.


The takeaway from the text? It's not to think to highly of yourself. We need to thank God for the blessings we have rather than whine about the things we DON'T have. It's amazing to sit and talk to an older person who has lived through the Great Depression....about how they had nothing....but they didn't care. In today's society all we can think of is getting more...more....more.....
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Old 06-19-2015, 09:41 AM
 
Location: Hyrule
8,390 posts, read 11,574,188 times
Reputation: 7544
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustJulia View Post
I belonged to a small message board about 10 years ago, and I posted about a time when a female stranger helped me at an opportune moment. It was a silly thing (helping me so I didn't miss a bus), but the scenario was odd enough that it felt like someone was looking out for me. I posted about it and blithely asked if the rest of them believed in angels or divine intervention. Another woman there, someone I liked and admired, had lost her 21-year-old son to leukemia the year before. It was only about six months between when he got sick and they found out until he died. She answered me bluntly that she prayed every day, all day, for her son to live and no, she did not believe a ******* angel appeared just to help me catch a bus while she was ignored. I had no idea until that moment what a self-absorbed thing it was to say, but I sure notice it now.
Wow, that story sure sums it up. Thanks for sharing this. We've all been guilty, even atheist have bragged where bragging was not timely.

Last edited by PoppySead; 06-19-2015 at 10:06 AM..
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Old 06-19-2015, 10:03 AM
 
Location: Hyrule
8,390 posts, read 11,574,188 times
Reputation: 7544
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio View Post
We just studied through Matthew 20 the other night in our men's Bible study. Included in the text were a few stories, but one was the parable of the landowner who paid all of his workers the same, regardless of the number of hours they worked. Many of them resented the ones that did less work for the same money.

In another story, we read of the mother of James and John requesting a special place in the Kingdom for her sons. The implication was that they were somehow more deserving of others.


The takeaway from the text? It's not to think to highly of yourself. We need to thank God for the blessings we have rather than whine about the things we DON'T have. It's amazing to sit and talk to an older person who has lived through the Great Depression....about how they had nothing....but they didn't care. In today's society all we can think of is getting more...more....more.....
True, I think people do it out of fear actually. They fear having less, or getting ill, injured or left in a scary position. Who doesn't!

Thanking God is an attempt to have some control over your life, imo. If I'm good enough and thank God enough I won't endure as much hardship. They don't realize everyone is afraid, and when those around us suffer these things it's like a magnifying glass on how little control we really have. Those who thank God out loud need to realize the impact. Especially for those who believe. Nobody wants to be the victim of "mysterious" ways.

It's human to brag, it's also a security blanket. I'm good, doing well, thank you God!! It becomes habit for some. But for every public announcement someone makes there is always going to be a victim of "mysterious" ways who see's it. It's difficult to watch surfers from the shore with one leg if you know what i mean.

The urge for protection and help through life is so strong sometimes I find my self asking for it from God, hoping I'm wrong. Then I come to my senses and realize we all ride the wave of life. Sometimes we're on a good wave riding long and sometimes we crash into the surf. It's just a process.

There is no mysterious way for all those who've crashed, some are just better at surfing than others. Practice is better than prayer for me but sometimes you just didn't see that shark under water, you can't know everything that's coming. There is no fault, it just is. Which brings me back to "sh i t happens" Handle how you can and know another wave is coming, or your surfing days are gone and your on to a new adventure even if the transition was forced.

BUT, it doesn't mean you can't be happy you're riding a great wave! People also admire a string of good luck or practice that paid off. It's only jarring when a "parent" is involved. Which is why thanking God has a different meaning than just saying," I"m stoked for my good fortune right now." With God thrown about your achievements you are saying they are "gifts" from the Dad of everyone else. That of course will be taken differently as it is meant to be. Then there's the devil comments, don't get me started.

Last edited by PoppySead; 06-19-2015 at 10:14 AM..
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