Personal Currency: Pity and Respect

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Conflict behaviors take on many forms in interpersonal relationships: patterns emerge and develop over time from a lifelong curriculum involving experience and discipline that results in character.  The earliest lessons often begin at the most tender ages of early childhood as we perceive low or high levels of personal power.  As a result, people seem to trade in either pity or respect.  The orientation towards pity or respect can slide along a continuum of extremes; but we generally recognize ourselves to be either strong enough to meet life’s challenges, or weak and reliant upon others to meet our needs. 

There are those who place a premium on respect accept responsibility for their actions; they inspire confidence through honesty, integrity, persistence, and being fully present for life’s challenges.  They act from a core of strength, stability, and congruence.  They practice accurate thinking and rigorously avoid errors in their own logical processing.  They value honest advisors who care enough to guide them and offer correction and advice. In short, they “own their stuff.” 

Conversely, there are those who manipulate those around them, either subtly or overtly, utilizing pity as a lever on the fulcrum of another’s sympathies.  They decline their responsibility, possibly blaming and utilizing a myriad of reasons why they can not rise to a particular challenge.   In extreme cases, relationships are saturated with excuses, expectations of unwarranted rescue, and rote tapes of sad stories.  Manipulation often utilizes the tools of mistruths, partial truths, or overt lies to others and to oneself about choices and circumstances.  These lies lead to confusion, both internally and interpersonally.  Habitual lying trains the mind to practice habitual confusion, leading to an inability to think correctly, effectively, and logically.  Effective problem solving may become impossible to the pathological liar.  Common sense is minimized or lost; nonsensical thinking reigns.

In the classic tale of The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas perfectly illustrates a character trading on pity.  The man is a confirmed criminal.  Through the course of his life, he is shown mercy in several critical points of despair and poverty, even being released from his criminal sentence as a galley slave though the kindness and intervention of a benefactor.  However, he chooses to burglarize a home, during which he is mortally wounded.  While dying, he states:

“No; I will not repent.  There is no God, there is no Providence – all comes by chance.”

Monte Cristo:  “This is what the God in whom, on your death-bed, your refuse to believe, has done for you:  he gave you health, strength, regular employment, even friends – a life, in fact, which a man might enjoy with a calm conscience.  Instead of improving these gifts, rarely granted so abundantly, this has been your course:  you have given yourself up to sloth and drunkenness, and in a fit of intoxication have ruined your best friend.”

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey defines responsibility as ‘the ability to respond.’  How does one practice the ability to respond appropriately or effectively?  Practice truth.  Seek to build skill in logical thinking.  Surround yourself with friends who offer wise counsel.  Commit to truthful interpersonal transactions.  Avoid manipulation.  Be fully present.  Be grateful.