One way you can divide people is between empathy and lack of empathy – into empathetic people and unempathetic (or, to put it another way, ‘me me me’) people. Say there’s about 50% of either. As a child, I basically marvelled at the ‘me me me’-ness of my father. How could he keep it up? Just ALWAYS thinking about himself. (Even when my mother had a mastectomy because of cancer, and was in hospital, his reaction was: Who’s going to cook my dinner…?) I thought – at the time, as a kid – he must somehow be BETTER than me. And then – as a teenager – thought: No, he’s WORSE!
But it’s not a question of better or worse. Sure, without Me people, we wouldn’t have Donald Trump. But we wouldn’t have Prince either… Or Miles Davis. The fact about Me people is they simply exist. If anything, you ought to feel sorry for them (typical empathetic behaviour!) for just NOT seeing how things really are. Other people are – above all – INTERESTING. If you just look at Me, you may (superficially) get what you want… But the price is too high.
For me, at least…
