MISERY LOVES COMPANY:
One of the oldest aphorisms in the English language is ‘Misery loves company”. Various interpretations of its meaning and explanations of its origins have been offered. I’ll focus on one of its meanings: those who are miserable wish others a full share of misery, the dominant meaning of the saying in America at the present time.
Misery may appear too strong a term for the ongoing dissatisfaction with life, the discontent with our current situation, and the resentment towards those who seem to be enjoying life and all the wonderful material and relational riches of this life. Surely they are content and satisfied because they took advantage of others or were privileged by skin color or some other attribute over which they had no control. But misery is not too strong a term for the experience of being unable to appreciate living in an age of human history with the greatest number of people enjoying the highest standard of living relative to our ancestors, and in a country with great opportunities open to all, yes, to all, to experience happiness and fulfillment. At the root of this misery is the attitude towards life rather than any particular external situation. How you manage your response to disappointments and perceived injustice more than the events themselves is what causes you to be miserable.
I say you - of course I mean we. Resentment of the greater success of others from the same social class, or high school, or university easily creeps in. Worse, resentment that another excels because of some perceived injustice swells into bitterness at others, individuals or groups. How to respond? Justice demands that we all share equally in the fruits of the earth, and if not, that we all suffer equally and therefore arrive at the same place of ongoing discontent, indefinite dissatisfaction, and fraternal misery. And this is the message of our age - we don’t laud and honor the successful, we tear them down to our level. The second-rate musician does not cheer on the wunderkind who rises from being his student to concert master in a prestigious orchestra. The failed politician does not admire the rival better able to persuade voters to join in a positive vision. And no mother who has willfully ended the life of her child in the womb wants others spared from the ongoing guilt involved. No, we live in an age where we seek the equity of disappointment and the equality of guilt. Not for us a strong sense of gratitude, no platitudinous declaration of thanks for our daily bread, no prayer for forgiveness for my miserable actions.
The foundation of this desire to have others share in our misery, for others to to be as cynical and resentful as we are is an inability to face the truth, not construct our own truth. In my truth, the wunderkind really isn’t as talented as I am, and anyway, I taught her everything she knows. In my truth, the rival politician did not best me, he colluded with Russians, or was favored by the biased media, or simply stole the election. In my truth, the child in the womb is only a clump of cells not exactly as I was years ago in my mother’s womb. The miserable among us are constantly crying out - IT’S NOT TRUE! in a vain attempt to drown that little voice of conscience saying - ‘she really is more talented than you are’, ‘he won fair and square’, or ‘it’s a baby’. And we do drown it out, for a while. But it comes back, so how to dismiss the stark realities of unequal talent and ability, of unfavorable situations, of disconcerting truths spoken by others? Misery loves company, so take solace in misery by spreading it to others.
This is best exemplified in the current push to re-value abortion as a positive, enriching, ennobling thing rather than a tragic death or barbaric homicide. There is now an attempt to portray the killing of an innocent, vulnerable, defenseless human being in her first months of life as a good thing. We have reached the depths of efforts, doomed ultimately to fail, to deny the truth, for no amount of shouting, protesting, and screaming about rights will change the reality that the child in the womb is an innocent human being, filled with he potential to love and be loved, to smile with affection at her mother when first smiled at, to give and receive hugs.
In The Screwtape Letters, the senior tempter notes that the damned, the most miserable beings there can be, feed on the souls of those recently brought into their midst. Regardless of your feelings or thoughts about afterlife and Hell, the vision of the miserable feeding on others is most apt. So now, the pro-abortion forces in America are not satisfied with encouraging women to kill their own pre-natal children, they seek to compel those opposed to participating in the barbaric practice to do so. Recent legislative proposals at the national level and in some states would exclude any conscience protections for health care providers - refusing to participate in the killing of pre-natal children would result in fines or the loss of one’s license. The culture of death will brook no resistance - all must join in the ongoing misery engendered by taking the life of an innocent human being.
Among us walk the miserable and the joyful. The latter seek to reach Heaven in this life and the next and bring along with them as many as they can, for Joy also loves company; the former seek not only to create Hell and take others into it, but to impose it on others lest they reveal the lie of the miserables’ depiction of themselves as compassionate and just. Best to walk in the company of joyful.