Parabolical Parabola

There are moments when I feel my life is pathetic. I feel like that servant in the parable of the talents, who rather than investing his master's talents, buried them not to lose them. I can't help but feel like there's something more I can do. The lives of others become evidence in the case against me. What if I did this? What if I did that? Am I wasting my life? Have I already wasted my life?

I can note that these are feelings, and feelings are messages sent to me from deep within. In this case, it's a warning light that's telling me a spiritual tune-up is due. It's easy to forget that it is a subjective impression rather than an objective assessment.

There's a part of the brain that compares who we are to others, and it never stops. It sees the lives of some and figures "Gee, wouldn't it be great to live like that?" The next question is, "Why am I not living like that?" It is at this point that things go awry, where self-criticism, numbing and over-analysis as coping mechanisms begin.

The issue is multifaceted. First, the assessment of another life is superficial and based on a sliver of data. Second, the assessment of my own life by this part of me is negatively biased since it's looking for all the reasons why I do not have a "good thing". Under this protocol it is highly unlikely that it would reach the conclusion "I don't have this good thing because of a "good" quality" because it doesn't make intuitive sense.

That intuition is probably rooted in childhood: if you are good, good things happen. If you are bad, bad things happen. Ergo, the reverse must also be true: if good things happen, you must have been good and if bad things happen you must have been bad.

So when the result of a comparison is negative, a bad thing happened which must mean that I have been bad. Hence the self criticism: lazy, undisciplined, dumb, bullshit artist, fat, ugly, weird, asshole, and so on. This is the third aspect of the issue: the response to this assessment.

You may have an opinion of something - a band you love, a movie you hold dear, a business strategy you know is the way forward. That opinion can be shook by another's (the likelihood of it happening depends on your self-esteem). You can respond to the alternative opinion by ignoring it, adopting it or integrating it.

Integration is normally the best option, unless the conflicting opinion is malicious (then ignore it) or expert (then adopt it). Integration is also the hardest because it is admittedly ambiguous and changes you, even if marginally.

Integration necessitates being open minded but self-possessed and lies somewhere on the spectrum between being cravenly complaisant and fanatically pigheaded. I can act, and have acted, on both extremes (as most).

As odd as it sounds, this is a process that has to take place within as it does without. The part of me comparing me to the servant has an opinion. I know that this part is not malicious, though it may be uncouth and hurtful. But I also know that it is not an expert, because it's part of me.