Somewhere Over the Narcissist’s Rainbow

Are you a magnet for narcissists?

Survey says… possibly and probably.

Based on shared experiences… we’re all a magnet for narcissists, while no one is the narcissist for whom we’re all magnets.

And…

You don’t need to have previous experience to qualify for this position of being a magnet for narcissists. All applicants are welcome, whether you want to be welcomed or not.

Previous experience may help or hinder, depending on what you’ve learned from it, how you use it and how others (and narcissists) may use it.

Want to know if you may be a target for a narcissist, ask yourself if someone else sees you as a rainbow which may lead them to a pot of gold.

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But to ascertain that, you need to have a certain grasp of your own value… especially to others.

Which requires understanding your own rainbow, the light and the dark, and all the shades and hues in between.

And also the light and the dark, and all the shades in between of others.

To understand those of others, you need to understand yours. And how those hues and shades, light and shadow, overlap and blur together – relationships, interactions, etc – and are perceived by all and sundry.

In other words – you have to have a healthy (as healthy as is humanly possible) mix of narcissism and empathy.

Empathy in this case = being able to understand others, logically, as beings who have many of the same things as you do, but who are also separate from you and have individual lives which are not related to you, not all about you, but who may have similarities to your experience of living life to which you can relate, and bring that relativity to bear on logical understanding.

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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee

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If that sounds complicated, it’s because it is.

Particularly the being logical about it.

Everything connected to humans is complicated, especially relationships. And it is often illogical and irrational (when viewed by others of us, by us of others, not so much when viewed by us of ourselves or them of themselves – we all think we’re the marvelous exception). We all think we’re the smartest person in a room full of fools – and they think the same.

Welcome to Me-Festivus, that celebration of self which many of us pretend not to celebrate, but do it anyway undercover because we’re smarter than others (and so say all of us!). We like to pretend we’re who we are not to protect who we think we actually are, and other tales and fairy myths which may be based on a true story.

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“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”
― Abraham Lincoln

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When a relationship goes wrong, which can happen so easily that you may wonder how come we haven’t all killed each other, and how come we’re all still alive enough to witness this part of collective human evolution which apparently is – entering a new extinction phase – where humans may be next in line to disappear.

We’ve done our time, and done it so well that we’ve outdone ourselves.

Has the human race reached the finish line, ahead of time because we’re so competitive (and cheat to win sometimes)? Maybe, maybe not… we’ll see. Or not, because we won’t be here to see it.

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“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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As far as nature is concerned, humans are all narcissists. It’s all about us. Our nature dominating all other nature for the nurture of our nature which is no longer connected to the nature of the natural world.

It’s never our fault either. The fault lies elsewhere.

The 99% blame the 1% for being greedy. The 1% blame the 99% percent for their greed. Supply and demand, the demand for supply supplies the supply for demand, greed feeding greed, and the rape of the earth and natural world for the benefit of humans even if only 1% get to revel in it like pigs in mud during a very muddy season.

We hate them… until we become them. We hate them because we want to be them. What happens when we be them? Then we hate the them that hates the them who we’ve become due to hating them but wanting to be them. Ambition… how hungry it is, never sated even when achieved.

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“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”
― Walt Whitman

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As far as humans are concerned, when thinking about such things, thinking not feeling, or at least feeling thinking = thinking feeling, narcissists are those people who aren’t us, who are not who we need them to be for us, they want us to be who they need us to be for them, and that is not who we want to be, or who we want them to be for the us who we want to be…

Or something like that, something which we all hate but also love in a love/hate kind of manner – typical of humans and relationships, and complications in relationships… which we cause and others cause, we we cause together but then portion out the reasons of the cause, which we prefer to blame others for causing while we remain innocent victims.

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“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
― Andrew Boyd

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Our need for innocence hurts us, and hurts others, but we’re so attached to it we prefer to pass on the wound than deal with it ourselves. We don’t want to lose our innocence, our magical thinking selves, like we don’t want to grow old. We hate our natural flow which pushes and pulls us where we don’t want to go. Maturity. Wisdom. Decay, death, accepting the natural process of… you ain’t going to look like that forever even with plastic surgery!

We prefer to not notice how our consumption is eating this world alive like a shark chomping on a human while they are swimming in its ocean. The human was just having some fun, some R&R down time after consuming the resources of the planet, but being innocently oblivious, better off that way and so… stuff… and bad shark! Poor human!

Kill all the sharks… and humans can then swim safely in the ocean, polluted and altered by us, and have fun without their fun being ruined by nature protecting itself and its territory, even if their fun is ruining the planet for the rest of the natural world.

We’re special, rules are not allowed to apply to us.

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If I sound like an activist, that’s just an optical or oral illusion.

I’m a mess… perhaps you can relate to that.

Humans do that kind of thing, sound and seem to the eye to be all – save the natural world – when making an impression of ego on other humans, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, we have a tendency to be hypocrites – do as I say (which has been designed to be heard and sound pretty tidy) not as I do (please don’t look too closely at what I actually do and the chaos of it).

We’re lacking in conviction… even though we’re quick to convict others for the same crimes we may commit, while absolving ourselves, because of this and that and effing cut me some slack even if I never do that for anyone else.

So the narcissist is quick to accuse others of being the narcissist – therefore they win in the narcissist accusation games! Yay, them!

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“Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy.”
― Erol Ozan

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Recently I’ve had a few comments from people questioning the whole ‘narcissist’ label. They’re right to question it. It has become too popular to be reliable.

Too diffused.

Too used. For all intents and purposes.

Too widespread and buttered on everyone. When everyone falls, it’s always on the buttered side.

Too quick to be applied. And used to condemn, while getting support for condemning.

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“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.”
― Douglas Adams

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The revolution of the suppressed, oppressed and abused has become a reason to lynch, guillotine, and burn anyone who has mildly bothered us.

Did someone say ‘No’ to you when you wanted a ‘Yes’? For shame! Let’s make them pay for that using… popular culture! (Don’t worry this won’t apply to you if you say ‘No’ to someone who wants a ‘Yes’ – but effing read the smallprint and beware of your allies).

The abusive, oppressive, and suppressive have found their new means to control, censor, and get to their victims yet again through being the victim who victimises their victim by labeling them a victimiser, and gets supported by all those who have felt the burn, throttle, and knife. The abused, oppressed, suppressed get recruited by petty tyrants posing as one of them, and get offered the promise of revenge, redemption, and so much more against their victimiser through… allying themselves with a power which doles out abuse, oppression and suppression.

And so it goes…

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“Read it with sorrow and you will feel hate.
Read it with anger and you will feel vengeful.
Read it with paranoia and you will feel confusion.
Read it with empathy and you will feel compassion.
Read it with love and you will feel flattery.
Read it with hope and you will feel positive.
Read it with humor and you will feel joy.
Read it with God and you will feel the truth.
Read it without bias and you will feel peace.
Don’t read it at all and you will not feel a thing.”
― Shannon L. Alder

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Not so long ago it wasn’t that way in this particular arena, but things change quickly, while remaining the same – we humans are always on a witch hunt, always finding witches everywhere but within, and find friends and allies when on the hunt, because we all feel a sense of togetherness when we’re frying someone else.

Burn the witch, male or female, and watch them burn in the fires of our fury… aren’t we all clever and safer so doing so!?!

But why?

Answering that may expose you… so just accuse and let others deal with answering things which expose.

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“To perceive is to suffer.”
― Aristotle

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And at what point is the witch hunt to which we belonged going to turn on us?

If we think we’re safe… we’re being too innocent about human nature.

Once all the obvious witches have been burned, we’ll all turn on each other, making our way to ourselves through others while trying to protect ourselves by burning them.

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by offermoord

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I had a comment today, all it said was – “Poor, poor, poor, poor” – on this post –  Answering Questions about Narcissists (something I wrote a while ago based on search stats, half humourously), and came from someone who claimed to be in some form a ‘narcissist decoder’ (link was broken to this decoding of narcissist place and person).

What?

Poor what? Or who?

You? Me? Both? Them? All of us? Everyone except you?

Or did they mean to use ‘pour’ instead of ‘poor’? They were certainly laying it on thick by repeating one word without anything else.

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“It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way”
― Jeremy Aldana

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When commenting on a blog for the first time, especially a blog like mine which moderates comments, it’s best to give a bit more info about yourself and why you’re commenting… or your comment may stay in the limbo of ‘pending moderation’. As I don’t know you or what you mean, and if you’re just another narcissist wanting to take pot shots at me and others who comment here because you’re above and beyond and live somewhere over the narcissist’s rainbow.

Willing to give you the benefit of the doubt…

But that doubt flows many ways, and can be a pot of gold, as much as it can be the rain which causes rainbows to happen, or the sun which makes rainbows out of rain when viewed from a certain angle.

Sometimes the sun doesn’t make rainbows out of rain, and no pots of gold can be found on that day.

And so it goes.

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“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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And sometimes… that’s what pisses us off.

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