One thing in life you control completely are your feelings. If you don’t “feel the way you expect”, then start feeling whatever it is that will be more pleasing.
It’s like it’s the baby’s job to provide the mother with feelings. The baby is somehow controlling the mother’s feelings better than the mother does.
I have no idea how these people go through life with this utterly incongruous, weird worldview.
Americans seem to see the world, and everyone really, from an “It’s all about me” perspective. It’s not that other nationalities do not do this, but outside America this attitude is generally looked down on, whereas most Americans do not see it as unusual at all – in many other cultures instead, it would be considered not only abominable but even unconscionable or plainly absurd.
This reminds me of an early encounter with an American whom I had met while studying at university in England. We were discussing cultural differences between Brits and Yankees, and her answer struck me so forcefully that it still resonates with me after all these years: “If the fuss is not about ourselves, then what the heck?”
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”One thing in life you control completely are your feelings. If you don’t “feel the way you expect”, then start feeling whatever it is that will be more pleasing.”
So all those times you complain about feeling humiliated at race struggle sessions you’re complaining about your own desire to feel that way?
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It’s normal and healthy to feel humiliated in response to humiliation.
Rage, grief, pain, etc are normal feelings when situationally appropriate. If a relative dies and you feel grief, that’s normal. If the ice cream parlor runs out of your favorite flavor and you feel grief, that’s not normal because it’s situationally inappropriate. And I can’t believe I have to explain this to an adult person.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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