I used to hang up the phone every time I talked to my sister and feel sorry for her. She was living alone with dogs, she suffered terribly when they died, she lived in the middle of absolutely nowhere, far from much of her life. Poor Jane, I thought, she lives alone, she lives with dogs, who will care for her as she grows older? I was used to feeling sorry for my sister, I had done it all my life.

And she often hated me for it, I learned later. She did not want anyone’s pity.

As I began to heal myself and face myself, I came to see that it is very often no gift to feel sorry for people. My sister can take good care of herself, she has been doing it her whole life, and she chose her life and is happy with it. How patronizing and revealing for me to presume to feel pity for her when she felt none for herself and was in need of none.

I realized it was an arrogant thing to do, that it said more about me than her. Pity and compassion are different things, so is feeling sorry for someone and feeling empathy for someone’s suffering. I came to see that I often felt sorry for people when I talked with them or met with them. I felt sorry for one friend who had a chronic illness and would not treat it. I felt sorry for another friend who chose to avoid looking for a partner or spouse in life.

Feeling sorry for others was a way for me to feel better about my own sorry and often unhappy life, a way of feeling superior to others.

I felt sorry for a friend who was once lived a creative life, but now is not, she seems happy to be a housewife and shopper and pool person. She is relieved to have money. I felt sorry for another friend who is so enmeshed in the life of her family, so dutiful and obligated and busy, that she does not make time for herself and has given up on her dreams. I felt sorry for a friend who was eager to retire and gave up work he loved and was good at to drive around the country visiting national parks.

How could he give up his work, I fretted? I was sure he would soon be miserable. He is not, he loves driving around the country visiting parks.

I had this revelation about myself a few months ago- why is it I don’t ever have revelations about me that are flattering? – that I too often had the habit of feeling sorry for people. I believe that when I feel sorry for someone, I am most often reflecting the sorrows and regrets in my own life. I have no right to make such judgments about the lives of others, people may seem lost or sad to me, but each of us is on our own path, pursuing our own dreams. There is no single definition of happiness or contentment.

People do not need to lead my kind of life to be happy.

My sister loves her dogs as dearly as anyone loves anything, and is happy every minute she is with them. She is, in fact, happier than most people I know.

My friend chose to avoid the American medical maw and health care system, he chooses to manage his illness in his own way with his own diet and program. Who am I to say that is wrong? My creative friend loves shopping and swimming in her pool, it makes her happy, perhaps much more so than struggling to live a creative life in this Darwinian world.

Some people project unhappiness to gain sympathy and support. People who inspire pity are often very powerful people. It is not easy to get someone else to take care of you, to worry about you, to feel sorry for you. That takes a great deal of creativity, of strength, manipulation. Quite often, I have learned, the people I feel sorry for are very powerful people, more powerful than I am.

Because the people in my family felt so sorry for themselves, I grew up loathing the very idea feeling sorry for myself. I wish I had more pity on myself, it might have spared me the awful crack-up that came with my self loathing and hatred.  It kept me from seeing the truth about myself before it was too late.

It was always easier for me to feel sorry for other people, and it still makes me nearly ill to feel sorry for me. I’m not sure I want to change that. If I had spend more time worrying about me, and less time worrying about others, I might have spared myself and others a great deal of grief. My friend Paul committed suicide a few months ago and I have  been working hard not to feel sorry for him. We own our own lives, no one can take them from us.

I wrote in one of my earlier books that the people to pity most are those who don’t feel anything at all. None of the people I feel sorry for fit that category. They all feel quite a bit.

There are some people who claim to be my friends who sometimes feel sorry for me – when I had open heart surgery, when I struggled to sell Bedlam Farm, when I write openly about my struggles and failings. They are not my friends for long. I do not accept the pity or presumption of anyone who presumes to tell me how I feel or feel sorry for me. I do not want them around me or in my life. I do not care for people who tell me how I feel rather than ask me. I don’t wish to be one of those people.

So what business do I have doing this to anyone else? None, of course, I am grateful to discover that, it is not necessarily admirable to feel sorry for people.  I feel empathy for the poor, I do not feel sorry for them. We are all responsible for ourselves, we cannot carry the loss, grief and pain of the universe in our hearts and souls, that is not compassion, that is a kind of self-degradation.

I upset a friend who told me her heart broke for every suffering animal in the world, she worried about each one and wanted to save them all. I am sorry to hear it, I said, if you feel sorry for all of the animals in the world, then you feel sorry for none. You are finding a way to feel sorry for yourself. She did not care to hear it, I am sure.

All of this is really about me, not them. I am learning to understand the boundaries of my feelings and their interactions of the world.  Feeling sorry for people is just another way to lament life, to give pieces of oneself away. I hope I never stop feeling compassion for people. I hope I am never unable to stand in their shoes. I hope I do not again presume to feel sorry for other people, and always remember that this is always about me, and not about them.

Dorothy Parker once wrote that misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation. Finally, after many years,  I got irritated with me.