pleasure in our own misfortunes
I once had a YouTube channel where I talked about how people take pleasure in their own misfortunes - myself included. I'm returning to this topic because of how crucial I believe it is to achieving lasting happiness.
You probably know the feeling of simply enjoying a good complaint. Or perhaps you know people who go to the hairdresser to merely gossip about what bad, has just happened in their life.
Personally, you may also have some unresolved situation, but at the same time there is a force inside of you that keeps you in it, allowing you to feel bad about it.
Sounds familiar?
This force is the pleasure that keeps us close to all these misfortunate situations we can't get out of.
What are some examples of this pleasure? One thing it can give us is the feeling that someone cares about us. Take, for example, a grandfather whose head hurts. Because of it, his children take an interest in him, whereas normally nobody would visit him.
For example, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, this concept is called jouissance. I have nothing scientific to add about it, except that during psychoanalysis, the analysand (i.e. the patient) often complains about the problems in their life, while, in reality, deriving pleasure from the very situation they are complaining about.
Don't get me wrong. Personally, I very much enjoyed complaining about all the misfortunes that seemed to befall me - the greater and smaller obstacles of life. I suppose I may have not completely renounced this tendency even now. One specific example: I felt anxiety that made me let someone else make decisions for me, which seemed safer than making them myself. The benefit, the pleasure, was in feeling like a child — a child for whom decisions are made. Situations like this could be listed endlessly.
But what now? What should we do if we want to get rid of the misfortunate situation that we get pleasure from? In my view, it's not easy. Giving up any pleasure involves, to some degree, giving up something that is valuable to us. The same is true of the pleasure that comes from some misfortune that happens to us — something that, in reality, we bring upon ourselves. Which is all why we sometimes stay in these bad-for-us-situations endlessly, not wanting to give up that pleasure that keeps us in them.
And yet, what awaits us around the corner, if we were to give up this pleasure derived from misfortune, is a life that is in accordance with who we truly are.
So here is the question: are we ready?
Yours,
Mikolaj