How Self-Pity Can Be Beneficial Towards Attaining Higher Consciousness

The School of Life addresses through animation, the the painful subject of self-pity, noting that one must travel through the process of feeling sorry for oneself in order to learn greater empathy and compassion towards others on the path leading to higher consciousness.

The path out of self-pity involves an arc of development. …Far from meaning that our suffering doesn’t matter, it’s rather the case that all suffering matters and can unite the afflicted into a giant collective, who might – when they have time to look up from their own sorrows – feel pity for one another. Suffering doesn’t have to isolate, it can also bring us together. As we leave self-pity behind we enter a world in which suffering is a constant and failure is the norm. We have not been singled out. Indeed, when we look back from this higher place, we don’t have to find even self-pity so strange or deplorable. …There’s true progress here and the attainment of a state of mind that should be dignified with a special name: higher consciousness.