Pitiful Pathetic Losers

the role models amongst us

My dearest midsummer readers,

This is not a seasonal post because it's about being Pitiful, Pathetic and what the unimaginative might call a Loser - which doesn't fit in with the other fun beach reads you had planned for your summer. Sorry bout that.

But, in order to bind this newsletter to truth, I must acquiesce to what's actually here, and what's actually here has nothing to do with sun-soaked sexcapades and everything to do with a smouldering desire to deliver previously truculent words from their damnation. Sorry bout that.

It was borne of the common faux-pas of using the names of disabilities as derogatory terms: dumb, lame, spazz, crazy, etc. As a woman of words and meanings, I pivoted quickly, adapting my language as best I could to reflect new understandings. And it got me thinking about other words we use that have perhaps been vilified unjustly.

Hinging our speech with every new learning by Sjoerd van Leeuwen

You may be wondering the relationship the author has to the words Pitiful, Pathetic, and Loser.

Surely she's never been called these names by someone else. Surely, she doesn't call herself these names. It wouldn't make any sense! She's nakedly ambitious, endlessly producing output, and releasing it to the public with an unyielding confidence and belief in her work!

And, it's true. Of all the mental distortions that accompany life as an artist, Imposter Syndrome has never touched me. I think I do great work. However, I often think that no one else really agrees with me about that.

I've illustrated this feeling as being the little girl in a big, empty auditorium. She's at a screening for her latest movie and no one has shown up. Yet, she is staring at the big screen wide-eyed and smiling. "Yay me!" she thinks "This is great!"

But, if someone were to be walking past the auditorium, look in and see this scene, they might think "Poor thing doesn't even realize no one cares (pitiful), fails to attract a crowd (pathetic), and is certainly not winning any pots of money or acclaim (loser)."

As someone who releases primarily non-beach-read material, this feeling comes up a lot.

Some might say it is a symptom of being the Black Sheep of the family, the one who doesn't enmesh with the values and points-of-view of the parents and carries this feeling of other-dom out into the world. If that Black Sheep also happens to get a brain injury and feel ever-more divorced from popular reality, the feeling calcifies.

BUT, dear reader, as I’ve found, this is all really a misunderstanding of semantics. Therefore, if you have any sour relationship to these words, allow me to transmute them to their rightful place:

If you are Pitiful, you are a soft opening of vulnerability. You've inspired the feeling of sympathy in others, meaning your mere presence has softened their cold, cold heart, this fleeting feeling of tenderness perhaps the only respite they've had from a mind otherwise filled with to-do's and to-dont's. You are walking poetry.

If you are Pathetic, you have seen it all, you have let life happen to you, and are brave enough to stick around and see what comes next. There’s no need to be guarded in your expressions because the unknown is your playground. The courage of your sincerity is stunning.

If you are a Loser, you are a revolutionary. If the dictionary defines a Loser as “one who fails to win or thrive,” the Loser asks, “What exactly are we supposed to be winning, and what is thriving supposed to look like?” The loser is the only one asking if what everyone else is running after is truly all there is. You are a radical in your persistence to the truth.

In Wim Wenders Perfect Days, we have our mascot, Hirayama. He's living a solitary life, cleaning public toilets with reverence, delighting in nature, photography, music, literature, food, gardening - fulfilled and captivated by life. Yet, others barely notice him, or, if they do, regard him as an inconvenience.

His well-to-do sister speaks with him only to ask if it's true he is cleaning toilets. After shaking her head in disappointment, she leaves without a word. Hirayama cries inconsolably.

He weeps for his estrangement from his family, no doubt, but I think what he really weeps for is the fallow lives of the non-Pitiful, non-Pathetic, non-Losers. So sad.

Here’s to a softer summer,

Abigail