Self- loathing and its big brother despair are the worst of all

Self- loathing and its big brother, despair, are the worst of all. But self- pity has a part to play - as an object lesson in how not to behave. He meant in terms of pleasure, but masturbation, ultimately, is just another sad, solitary activity None of those self-emotions does one much good. Self-pity is a passive sort of emotion, like apathy or depression. The better emotions are the active ones: anger, desire, greed.There is a good chance, however, that each of us will at some stage fall victim to a massive attack of self-pity. The fact that self-pity is unattractive doesn't make it any less real. If there was more pity, there would less self-pity and less need for it In a way my brother got it right.

If no one else is prepared to feel sorry for you, you have to do it yourself He also likened self-pity to self-abuse (ie masturbation). When the same cat was stolen by a crazy woman across the road and was gone for eight months, I never came to terms with the loss. But I learnt quickly enough that I had to appear to have got over it.The trouble with an emotion such as self-pity is that it can engender a sort of Arctic freeze which stops you from doing anything. "Couldn't you," she asked, with a staggering lack of sympathy, "ring up one of your friends who cares about cats?"Sometimes being told to get on with it is helpful, even necessary Sometimes it's not. It's not, therefore, unreasonable to feel upset and anxious at the prospect of old age, to say nothing of gloom and doom induced by the loss of one's beauty, one's ability to attract members of the opposite sex and so on. The march of time continues regardless of our feelings, and there are days when the power of positive thinking counts for nothing.

When my favourite cat went missing for three days, I got on the phone in tears to my best friend. It's a society where old peoples' homes have replaced the extended family, where old people are generally regarded as useless. He didn't - not in his terms, not in a way that made life tolerable.Self-pity is for those times when you don't deserve sympathy but you need it so much Like when you are feeling miserable about getting old. I have a friend who, almost every time I speak to her, says unhappily, "I'm going to be 50 next birthday." We live in a society where getting old is a definite minus.

When Caspar Fleming, Ian Fleming's beautiful, brilliant only child, finally succeeded in killing himself, people asked, "Why did he do it? He had everything to live for." But that is just it. I think self-pity merely rubs in the realisation that there is no one there to feel sorry for you, thereby creating yet another reason for self-pity.But self-pity is also the last resort emotion. And it is the nature of self-pitiers never to acknowledge reality (as in their good fortune), but always to find something to moan about. My brother claims - somewhat improbably - to regard self-pity as a pleasure, saying that it is always nice to have someone feeling sorry for one and, in the absence of anyone else, one has to do it oneself I don't know that I agree with him. Instead, they were courageous and dignified in the face of adversity.Self-pity is the luxury emotion, reserved for the person who has time and money to spare. Here were people with every reason to feel sorry for themselves.

She and her father were sitting together on the same bed in a hospital in Siem Reap. Between them was her three-year- old son, who was the only one not smiling. I remember a 20-year-old woman whose leg had been amputated at the groin after her foot had been hit by bullets in a Khmer Rouge attack and gone gangrenous. Her mother had been killed in the same attack and her father had lost an arm and a leg. The bravest people whom I have ever met were Cambodian amputees. But when you begin to weep and wail and sink into a useless state where you can't or won't do anything, a state where "Nobody loves me" is the song, you can't stop playing, then you have lost the battle with self-pity, and have moved way beyond the level that is permissible of feeling sorry for yourself.People with real problems, such as multiple sclerosis or bankruptcy or no roof over their head or a sick child, rarely indulge overtly in self- pity. You start off thinking, "It's so sad, my best friend has died." Then you think, "Poor me, no best friend anymore." So far, just about OK.