The Pity Stops Here!

One of the poisons to which we are all vulnerable is pity. The pity of others for us feels nice at first, but it can be a benign acid that gradually erodes self-confidence and identity. Even curable injuries or diseases can make us secretly enjoy collecting attentive care. We tell ourselves we love being loved, but the sneaky poison is airborne. Those who love us may find they relish taking care of us—even above and beyond what’s necessary sometimes. The addiction to debilitation spreads. Our identity becomes one of neediness. No one asks what we could do instead.

The step from suffering the pity of others to “poor me” is a short one—sometimes a slide. Soon we’re cutting back on our ambitions and modifying our efforts. When we look in the mirror and don’t see all of the same person who once made us proud, we sigh and obsess about our struggles. Surely we deserve an extra break from the vagaries of life. We remind ourselves: I HAVE SUFFERED. We somehow ignore the fact that EVERYONE suffers in one way or another. But everyone isn’t us, so we’ve earned our own sympathy. Haven’t we?

A potent antidote to self-pity lies in watching the 2024 Paralympics in Paris—the international sports contests designed for people with many kinds of disabilities. Watch for a while and your self-pity begins to droop. No wonder the Paris stands were filled with spectators. I can’t help imagining what a diagnosis of a severe disability must feel like to a normally able-bodied person. Many of the athletes were painfully disfigured in military battle, but no one gushes over them. They celebrate themselves by devoting whatever parts of their bodies that still function to extreme physical contests. Other competitors have endured birth defects, injuries, or ongoing progressive neurological diseases. They compete for their pride, their family, and the pride of their nation.

One of the most gripping events is the triathlon run in separate events for athletes with differing disability levels—the lower the number assigned to an event, the more devastating the disabilities involved. Imagine leaping into a river—that has a current of perhaps 3 mph to swim both with and against on the course—when you have a missing leg or no legs or only one arm, to swim beside competitors with similar situations. Assistants must lift some contestants out of the river at the end of the swim to their waiting wheelchairs or prosthetics, but the athletes are left to reattach prosthetic legs quickly to make it onto a bicycle adapted to their needs. Later, blind contestants share a tether with a guide who runs beside them as they proceed, hoping to best their opponents. And if the heat of the day makes someone’s prosthetic shrink or stretch until it’s increasingly painful, that’s part of the deal. There are no easy paths at the Paralympics. Each contest is work. These are rugged athletes.

The lesson to be gained from observing the raw grit of Paralympians is that in life you have two choices: you can bemoan the misfortunes that befall you. If you do, some will join your pity party and help to keep you functioning as a lesser person for the rest of your life. You may hide from your new, difficult responsibility to yourself with drugs—legal or not—and repeat the sad story of what you can’t do to anyone who will listen. Or you can glean whatever lessons about yourself you can discover and then rally your self-respect to tell yourself you’re going to explore what you can do. (Have you ever watched proficient archers who have no arms aim with their feet?) Most of us will never stretch as the Paralympians do, but we have a lesser version of the same challenge. So you’re growing older and no longer look good, see or hear well, or attract positive attention or job offers. What can you do? It’ll probably be something you’ve never done before and that’s good because novelty energizes your brain. At the very least, you may gain compassion for the struggles of others—an empathy that seeks to give a hand up.