Why Do We Take Pride in Being Busy, Sick, and Miserable?
Have you worked or lived somewhere before where being miserable was a sign of respect? When a friend has been sick and you have offered suggestions, were you then shocked to hear them appear to defend their right to be sick and resist getting any help? What makes us take pride in our misery and fight to keep it? For example, take this work conversation.
"Well, I stay later than you do."
"But I come in earlier than you do."
"Oh yeah, I don't take a lunch break."
It's like you're miserable at work, you hate it and you can't wait to go home. Why the hell is there pride in being more miserable than everyone else?
Why is this normal?
Why is it normal to suffer?
Prefer to watch? Try the original video of day 165 of Happier People Podcast on YouTube!
Why do we take pride in being busy, sick and miserable?
I know I just had a little uncomfortable moment talking to a family member and the whole thing behind it was that, "Well, you're just not suffering as much as the rest of us."
Like that you don't have enough misery in your life, that your life is easy because you're not miserable all the time.
This is the big thing with working at home and it's a big thing with stay-at-home moms that somehow because you don't have a job that you hate going to and miss out on spending time with your family, that somehow you're not as good as everyone else who's going to work and suffering, complaining about their boss, being aggravated, and coming home tired, exhausted, and needing something to take the edge off.
That somehow because you spend time with your child during the day, that you take care of your family, that you don't go do something that's completely pointless like shuffle a bunch of papers around that truly makes no difference at all and really just creates more work for other people, because you don't do some BS boring job somewhere, that somehow you're less than other people as you fully enjoy the rewards of life.
Isn't that insane?
My friends and I, we used to go out and drink five plus years ago, and I remember we joked at how miserable we were going to be the next day.
Well, I'm going to have a horrible hangover."
"I'm going to have to get up for work, that's going to really suck, at least you can sleep in."
"Well, I'm going to have to deal with this meeting in the middle of the day. Oh, man!
We're all comparing misery and taking great pride in the fact that one of us is potentially going to have it worse than the others.
Oh, that really sucks.
I remember that I used to stay up really late and say, "Oh, man, I'm going to have to get up tomorrow."
It'd be like some joke, like how funny it is, but it wasn't funny the next morning when I was tired and cranky, and aggravated. It wasn't funny when I used to have jobs that I hated going to and came home and complained. And yet, why do I feel like I'm getting away with some crime right now because I don't have a regular job to go to?
Why is it that I feel like I'm doing something wrong because I'm happy?
I think that's one of the things a lot of us struggle with when we actually make positive changes in our lives. I'm looking around to make sure I don't get hit by a car, that'd be a negative change, and then I could really tell you how miserable I was then.
"Let me tell you about how I got hit by a car walking my dogs, making a video for you. My God, that was so miserable."
What was I talking about before I went off on that?
I feel like that was a really good tangent and now I just totally blanked. It's fine, it's fine because I'm keeping it cool.
When some of us actually go on the diet, actually meet the person of our dreams, actually start having the life we've always been telling everyone, "If I just had this, I'd be happy," why is it when we get all that stuff, we feel like we're somehow screwing everyone else over?
Sometimes your friends will even stop hanging out with you because you're just too damn happy now, "I can't complain about how bad things are to you anymore. You just don't understand my life because your life is so nice, and you actually go to bed at a reasonable time. You actually get eight hours of sleep at night. You actually eat healthy and you exercise, and you spend time with your family. I just don't get you anymore. You don't understand my life where I'm miserable and I take great pride in it."
I understand that I feel like a lot of us, we look out around at our lives and say, "Well, I can't do things right, so my God, I'm going to make this crap pile of my life and it's something to take pride over. Look how nasty my life is. Well, you should see how nasty my life is."
That prevents us from actually getting what we want because all of a sudden now we've started taking pride in how messed up our lives are, and giving up even a little part of how messed up it is, means that now we're losing who we are.
"I just don't know who I am anymore, now that I get eight hours of sleep a night, and I eat right, and I pray, and I meditate, and I try not to have drama, and I work at home, and I have a nice life. I just don't know who I am anymore. I mean, who am I?
I used to take pride in being a fat alcoholic who made sure to have the top of the food pyramid as much as possible: fats, meats, sugars, oil.
"Hell yeah, let's pile that on, I don't want any vegetables, get that out of my face, if it's on my hamburger maybe."
I remember condemning my other family members who were trying to eat better. I remember feeling like my other family members were missing out on the fullness of life because they were different from me. I guess that's what happens when we want to be miserable.
"Oh, it takes one to know one."
Well, I'm grateful I'm sober now, I go to AA every day. I used to be pretty bad about driving and I'd run up on the curb. Yes, I used to be a pretty bad driver.
So who am I to judge if someone else tries to run me over one night because they're drunk and they're texting, and they don't notice that I'm walking my dogs in the middle of the road because there's no sidewalks?
These are my thoughts tonight. I share them because I hope they're useful for you. I feel like at certain points in my life this might not have made any sense, tonight it makes perfect sense and I talk about it because it's helpful for me to review these things and listen to them, hear these things because I want to keep having a happy life.
Why is it so tempting to be miserable?
There's something about it, it's just so sexy to be miserable, so sexy.
You get up after you are out all night drinking and/or drugging, or whatever you do, or eating ice cream sundaes all night. You get up in the morning, you feel like crap, and then you don't eat breakfast, and you're hungry all day at work. You get your coffee, and then you got a caffeine, you go on full-blast on caffeine, you're way over the top, and everyone's all crazy, and you're pissed off, and by God you're proud of it.
"Hello."
I always try and wave at everyone on my dog walks because you never know who is just on the edge of ending it all.
At least I appreciated every little wave I got when I was on the edge of it. You give what you want to get, right?
How's my camera time doing?
Oh, I can ramble on for like five more minutes before the camera cuts me off.
Nice.
Someone said,That Jerry Banfield guy has some massive ego.
I saw that comment on Steemit.
Am I a massive ego?
A massive ego!
"I guess I am whatever you say I am and if I wasn't, then why would I say I am in the paper, the news every day I am. I don't know that's just the way I am. Boom."
I hope you've enjoyed it.
I love you. You're awesome. I hope you have a great life.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk
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Jerry your post reminds me a lot of this chapter from "We Learn Nothing" by Tim Kreider, I think you'll like it
https://tim.blog/2015/04/03/lazy-a-manifesto/
reading this is a sign of relief for me. I totally understand it exactly because I was in the position before when I was meeting my friends and I am working at home. I always invites misery. I stop doing this and I realized I stop doing this when I got an offline job that made me feel busy and tired during the night that I stop feeling miserable. It gives me a different perception.
People actually blame you deep down in their minds, if you are more comfortable then them.. AKA Envy..
Happiness is the key of life .
I've worked in several places like, both private consultancy and an academic setting. I hate it.
I see and experience the so called misery contest happen all the time where I work and also with people who I interact with outside work. My workplace definitely promotes a culture of overworking ones self even if being there so many hours doesn't even accomplish any additional work.
I was once indoctrinated into the belief that working 50-60 or even sometimes 70 or 80 hours a week and having no free time was a noble or good thing. Then a few years ago it hit me that some day I'll be dead and none of it will matter.
So now I say NO to as many things as I can as far as work is concerned. I still get things done that are actually important but there's so much extra curricular crap that they force down our throats that it's really hard sometimes to just do my job as it's definite in the job description.
This is one insane world we live in isn't it.
"My workplace definitely promotes a culture of overworking ones self even if being there so many hours doesn't even accomplish any additional work."
As I noted below, it's immediately obvious why they would want to do that. It would be surprising if they didn't do it.
Japan tried forcing this culture for decades, and now they have a generation of young men who don't want to move out of their parents house or interact with women, because that is simply seen as a gateway to a lot of unwanted responsibility.
The balance between work and play in the west is well out of whack. We could use more siestas.
Funny you mention the Japanese...my company's headquarters are in Japan and the culture in my facility is kind of a bastardized version of what the Japanese were doing years ago. The Japanese expats in my facility are quite honestly more reasonable and logical in their thinking and actions than many of the Americans that run the place are.
I remember asking an expat if the kids there (in JP) still had 6 day / week school and he said "no we figured out it's bad for them so we stopped doing that".
I don't mind working hard and I like being productive but the corporate culture in the U.S. has become completely insane to the point where it's nearly impossible to get anything meaningful accomplished. Unfortunately I've only been in the corporate world for just shy of a decade so I can't say "oh it didnt' used to be this way..." and know for sure that I'm correct in saying that.
""no we figured out it's bad for them so we stopped doing that"."
I wonder if it's going to take a generation to get back to some sort of middle-ground. The young men there now are, on average, doing nothing with their lives.
Couldn't agree more with everything else you said.
Its only insane if the people around you feel you so. There's a sort of peer pressure that is a lot like a invisible blanket draped over different aspects of your life. Work tends to be the kind that is universal misery. Since work life is such a large component of life in general, and we are always trying to size up our peers, we end up having these shitting contest that is nothing but negative.
Is group mentality.. That generally is why people collectively stay late I think and end up loathing themselves.
As you might imagine, the corporations are absolutely fine to not only allow but promote this as well, whenever possible. Much like the banks encourage the idea that having bad credit, or breaking a contract (under the terms of the contract itself, like defaulting on a mortgage) somehow makes you a bad person.
I honestly think Mike Judge is a luminary in this area. His work on this topic in the movie Office Space is legitimately genius.
Unfortunately, by failing to reward loyalty, giving adequate raises, etc employers have made it a battle to attempt to do as little work as possible without getting fired. Just as Peter notes.
Everybody has his/her own opinion on this. More than often, it is as you have written in this post. Only small percentage of people will think otherwise. Well written and thoughtful.
@jerrybanfield Are you sure you dont live in the UK!? Especially Yorkshire, people love to moan in Yorkshire... :P
I think people also take pride in being busy and overworked at times too!
when people say they are unhappy o miserable, thereby they seek attention from others. Consolation, support, help, which they do not need. They need someone else's part. And they do not know other ways to get it.
This is the way to show and feel your importance to others.
THIS
a form of regulation of the self...