An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Evil wolf defined as - "he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” - it is being consumed by all of these things (not just which ever one part you think isn't as bad) that defines the counter part of evil. I think by feeding things like self-pity, arrogance, greed etc you will starve what is good in you. The reverse can be true.
Yes but the list provided by the OP is flawed. Some thing like false pride is inherently wrong because it's false. Pity is another word for compassion and compassion for yourself isn't evil either. Lies isn't an emotion. Ego is another word for self worth and that is healthy.
Ugh... I feel like I'm repeating myself again and again: emotions are too complex to categorize as good and evil, right and wrong.
The premise of this entire post is fundamentally flawed.
Yeah, it's a big Light/Dark side Star Wars talk. Ultimately it IS the balance between the two and having the wisdom not to be consumed by either. Self Pity isn't good to feed. You are not being compassionate to yourself and are likely poisoning your ability move on. - That is if all you do is feed something like Self Pity - "Oh I'm so fat, I can't lose weight, I can't stop eating, me me me..." VS "Man, look at this gut I'm getting; I better go run it off."
It's only bad because you use a negative term like "feed" where I can counter it just like I did before by using the word compassion. And we're playing another game of semantics because there are no inherently good or evil emotions.
Ugh, so let's go through this again: over consuming any emotion is dangerous. The right amount of self compassion and the right about of self respect and the right amount of righteous anger and the right amount of guilt is good an the right about of regret is good.
This is where you say, "But too much guilt is bad and too much ego is bad". And people have committed war crimes over love.
And too much sodium is bad, but that doesn't make sodium evil either.
You keep saying self compassion. I have never heard self pity referenced like that before. Not passing any judgement, just new to me. LOL - it's okay friend, metaphors are supposed to evoke thought and discussion - and here we the participants and audience may find value from this interaction in our irl world in the future. The goal is to not get worked up reasserting your point as you'll likely "feed" the vapors parts of the metaphorical wolf.