A Benign Narcissism

'Narcissism' immediately congers up synonyms. Vanity. Conceit. Selfishness. Egotism.

The word is derived from Greek mythology. The young Greek Narcissus was a stud-muffin who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love for himself, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name.

I drove a friend to an appointment today; she commented she liked my blog. We discussed how blogging is a weird niche -- it's a form of on-line diary, which all the world (or none of it) can read.

It's also narcissistic. My blogs are all about me, me, me. Remember the great joke from the New Yorker? 'Enough about me! Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?' Classic!

As I've noted in previous posts, I blog for myself. Great if other people read this, even better if they like at least some of it. Blogging is cathartic. I get an idea in my head, process it for hours or days, and perhaps it ends up as the topic of a post. If no one reads this, I guess there's a kernel, which, if expressed, would be a sigh of disappointment.

I'll never be the Salinger of blogs, yet I assume all bloggers have a wispy hope of becoming the cyberspace equivalent of Dan Brown or Nora Roberts. We all of us crave attention. As I said, blogging is narcissistic.

Some poor Ph.D. candidates are already slaving away, researching the narcissistic tendencies of people like, well, me.

PS - about narcissism. I suspect most bloggers are sub-clinical narcissists, not hard core/pathological ones. Just read this quote:

Sub-clinical narcissists are happy. They are less likely to be depressed, sad or anxious, and rate their subjective well-being more highly. They’re less reactive to stress, and recover more rapidly from it. Mild narcissism also seems to help people recover from accidents or other trauma—it gives them an unrealistic sense of their own invulnerability, and they believe that they will be able to handle whatever else life throws at them. . . .being somewhat narcissistic is like driving a huge SUV: You’re having a great time, even while you hog the road, suck up extra resources and put other drivers at higher risk. From: A Field Guide to Narcissism by Carl Vogel