Pity the fool. Unamuno, Life 7.8
Proper
pity for yourself is not selfish, in a bad way. It teaches you
compassion for others, who like you must live in limited and limiting
conditions.
El
amor espiritual a sí mismo, la compasión que uno cobra para
consigo, podrá acaso llamarse egotismo; pero es lo más opuesto que
hay al egoísmo vulgar. Porque de este amor o compasión a ti mismo,
de esta intensa desesperación, porque así como antes de nacer no
fuiste, así tampoco después de morir serás, pasas a compadecer,
esto es, a amar a todos tus semejantes y hermanos en aparencialidad,
miserables sombras que desfilan de su nada a su nada, chispas de
conciencia que brillan un momento en las infinitas y eternas
tinieblas. Y de los demás hombres, tus semejantes, pasando por los
que más semejantes te son, por tus convivientes, vas a compadecer a
todos los que viven, y hasta a lo que acaso no vive, pero existe.
Aquella lejana estrella que brilla allí arriba durante la noche, se
apagará algún día y se hará polvo, y dejará de brillar y de
existir. Y como ella, el cielo todo estrellado. ¡Pobre cielo!
Y
si doloroso es tener que dejar de ser un día, más doloroso sería
acaso seguir siendo siempre uno mismo, y no más que uno mismo, sin
poder ser a la vez otro, sin poder ser a la vez todo lo demás, sin
poder serlo todo.
Spiritual
love of oneself, the compassion one feels for the self, might perhaps
be called selfishness; but it is the thing most diametrically
opposed to vulgar selfishness that we can find. For this love or
compassion for yourself—this intense despair over the fact that as
you were not before birth, so after death you shall cease to
be—becomes compassion for others. That is to say, it becomes love
for your fellow beings and brethren in illusion, wretched shadows who
wander from nothing to nothing, sparks of consciousness that shine a
moment in the infinite and eternal darkness of unbeing. You see these
other humans, your peers, and your mind's eye moves from those most
like you, those who live with you, to all those alive, and even
perhaps to the one who doesn't live, but somehow still exists. That
distant star that shines above by night shall go out one day, and
fall to dust; it shall cease to shine, and to exist. And as it fails,
so too shall fail all the starry heaven. Poor heaven!
Though
it is painful to have to give up our being one day, more painful
still, perhaps, would be to keep existing always only as ourselves,
and nothing more. To be no more than yourself, a wretch incapable of
being at the same time something other, lacking the power to be at
once yourself and everything else—failing to become the all.