SSIS - a dreaded lurgy

Help! It’s an Epidemic! Grab your face masks and run for the hills! Oh, wait, this one you cannot escape with a face mask. Well, I suppose you can, were you to run for the hills all alone and never see a sodding soul again. You see it’s an insidious disease, it creeps up, and bashes you on the back of your head, making those around you hurt all over, and it seems to be becoming more and more virulent. I am seeing it at work, at play, in the supermarket… pretty much anywhere humans hang out.

It seems to happen while the person is not paying attention. The first symptom is a complete lack of interest in anything around them. Only the ‘Me’ is of any interest. Or anything that directly affects the ‘Me’. Then the speech is affected. Sentences begin only with ‘I’ and any questions as to the wellbeing of anyone else disappear completely. This may result in severe pain in those around you to which you will be completely oblivious.

It is a disease we have all been afflicted with at some stage. I’ve had it on numerous occasions, a couple of times really severely but, luckily, seemed to have pulled through (although this, of course, is subjective). The more you’re exposed to it, the more immunity you develop (like any good epidemic), so you can avoid it next time it rears its (very ugly) head. One assumes also that, with age, people would suffer less from it, but, in my experience, this doesn’t seem to happen. Unfortunately.

This disease, which strangley has not yet been WHO classified is called SSIS, or Serious Self Involvement Syndrome. Not to be confused with GowL (Getting on with Life) and TCoM (Taking Care of Me), both of which are NOT diseases but vital functions of life, and are completely mutually exclusive of SSIS. SSIS on it’s own is just, plain, dangerous.

Oh dear, this sounds bitter and twisted. This is not at all like me. I normally have such faith in humankind. It’s not meant to be bitter and twisted, rather just an observation of society as I’m seeing it. I blame Self Help Books partly, and the rest, well I guess it’s just Ego that’s to blame, and the society we live in. And I am, by no means, excluding myself from this dreaded lurgy. As I said, I’ve suffered from it too and, no doubt, will again.

I guess this is just a way of me making sure I pay attention and not become that which I find so hurtful. You see, that’s the thing, when exposed, one becomes extremely susceptible to the disease and it seems like the best option to react to an SSIS-sufferer by just breathing it in and becoming one too. This, obviously, is no good. Thus the need for figurative ‘face masks’, otherwise known as Paying Attention. It’s the only vaccine. And cure, for that matter. I'm going to go get me some large doses of it.

It was a long weekend of much reflection. That’s pretty obvious though, isn’t it?