Wednesday 6/14/23
Often, if you give someone the slightest provocation--and I'll do this just as an experiment--they will begin to praise themselves, and praise themselves, and praise themselves, as if nothing else in the world existed, because in reality, they live in their own world where nothing need actually be real.
They will say these things as if trying to convince themselves that they might be true, not even because they believe them.
You can facilitate them going on this way for as long as you wish. Once they get going, if you suggest anything positive about them, in any area, however outlandish, they'll take what you said and amplify it. Everything is about them--paradoxically, because they are so limited. Stunted.
It's sad, but it's also hard to feel bad for a narcissist, which is what so many people now are, because a narcissist only truly cares about themselves, and not in a productive or reasonable way, and certainly not a healthy way.
I find that there are women of a certain age range, who are attractive, who are especially prone to this. Then they also wonder why they are alone. And why no one is interested in them in a real way, beyond the physical.
Money can also play a role. Having come from money. Then it is more likely that a person has been shielded from the world and its workings, and has no perspective; everything is viewed through the lens of distortion. That will be most people in every MFA program. So what will they ever write of value, when they have no idea of the workings of reality? To say nothing of the answers behind the veil?
But these people in general make poor relationship choices, often making those choices because they have located someone who will let them go on, and on, and on, about themselves, and agree with whatever is being said. Someone that they can convince themselves is the right level of below them; or certainly not above them, which is not what the ego--the fragile ego--welcomes. Then, they are not alone, but they are also alone in the worst way.
They will be desperate, depressed, commonly self-medicated, and they will do what they do even more, in an attempt to compensate, to attest that they're worthy. If before it took a mere three words to facilitate their self-praise, now it can take but the one. But they are always trying to convince themselves more than anyone else. No one else even really exists to them.
It's good to know why you're alone when you're alone. Both when you wish to be, and when you don't wish to be.
With the latter, sometimes it's because of good things, unfortunately. Abilities, standards, that you are only interested in spending time with people of a certain intelligence, of a certain morality, of certain principles.
But often--because most people are very similar from person to person and make as little effort in life as possible and have no standards for themselves or others--it's because of not so good things.
An additional irony is that these people going on about themselves are not interesting. They never are. They're almost always vapid. Show a reasonable person what they just said to you, and that reasonable person just shakes their head and sighs. They know everything they will ever need to know about that other person. In seconds. As a third party.
They are not interesting in and of themselves, and they don't have anything interesting to say about the world, or have any interesting ideas, because their focus is always on themselves, and they have never considered or learned anything else, but nor have they truly considered who they are, or learned anything about that person, and who that person could become with understanding, clarity of vision, and self-awareness.
