Misery Loves Company

Came across an article and it just totally struck a chord with me.

Like a cymbal that just clanged over my head.

Not that I wallow in deep anguish on a daily basis (weekly perhaps), but the writer was right about one thing:

Depressed and unhappy people like to surround themselves with others as depressed and unhappy as themselves.

Because

Sometimes, when people are deeply unhappy, the last thing they want is someone to cheer them up. Instead, they want someone who will sympathise with them, preferably someone who has trodden the same path and understands what they are going through.

And so the writer continues his dribble about his favourite pessimist - Arthur Schopenhauer

A German philosopher

* Who argued that the human condition is so wretched that it would be better for all of us never to have existed

* Who saw human life as a pendulum swinging back and forth between pain and boredom,

* "The will's desires are unlimited, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives
birth to a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to still its crfaving, set a final goal to its demands and fill the bottomless pit of its heart."

* Who wrote "Everything in life proclaims that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated or recognised as an illusion. The grounds for this lie deep in the very nature of things."

* Who compared life to "a circle of hot coals haivng a few cool places, a path that we have to run over incessantly"

As negative as it sounds, I was somehow comforted and relished in emerging myself in his pain that seemed transcendent.

And that was all I needed.