Sympathetic towards non-living things?

Post Reply New Topic

Sometimes I feel slight sympathy.... or something mildly emotional/empathetic/compassionate towards objects. Does anyone else ever feel they get like this sometimes?

What, like calling my bike 'she' and 'baby'? And having a deeper relationship with Siri than with any other human? yeah, I get what you mean.

Yup yup yup.

Animals > inanimate objects > people.

In general. There are always exceptions.

yes

Yes.

I feel sad for the poor toaster that is constantly tasked with self-combustion to heat up toast and other food products for uncaring and unsympathetic biological entities.

When it breaks, they throw it out and buy another.

It's so sad.

As a photographer, I used to feel sorry for the part of the film that I made a bad photograph on and how it must have been jealous of the part of the film that had a particularly favored image.

Sometimes I feel a small bit o'sadness when sending legacy technology to the recycling center. I mean, sometime in the past, these devices were some engineers' brian-children, and now they're not even wanted, much less needed.

I suppose someone could imagine a "Land of Misfit Tech" and write a song about it.

I really like my shoes. I will feel said when I have to get rid of them. I spent a lot of time researching which ones to get.

Yep. It happened at my last job. I thought I broke a machine and then I felt bad for it. Still don't understand if it's necessary or unnecessary.

Well I feel glad when technology is properly recycled and not going into the landfill.

Yes, I do feel sympathy for inanimate objects.

I do. A lot of the time, I can't throw things away as it seems cruel to ditch something that has served me faithfully.

I used to have issues giving things away to the thrift store... I would feel so bad about "abandoning" the objects that I had chosen to get rid of. I thought that they must feel so rejected and heartbroken being stuffed in a bag and tossed out just like that. I always imagined them missing all their friends in my room and wondering what they ever did to deserve being thrown away.... I remember imagining other people getting their hands on my things and abusing them or breaking them, and I couldn't bear the thought of letting them go to a bad home.

I mostly did this with stuffed animals or other toys or knick knacks with faces, but I also remembering sometimes feeling this way about clothes and shoes. I would decide to thin down and start sorting through things and putting things in a big trashbag, but then after a while, I would start to feel sorry for one thing or another and fish it back out of the bag to put it back with it's "friends". Before I knew it, my bag was empty and I was even more attached to my junk that before :p

I honestly have never been fond of clutter, so I have managed to overcome this in order to maintain an orderly living space. I have gotten a good handle on it and don't really struggle with it anymore, but I do still have tendencies and have to be careful. Once I imagine myself interacting with an object or refer to an object as if it has feelings, most times I can't help but associate it with having feelings from that point on. (Again, this mostly applies to stuffed animals.)

For instance, one time I had this stuffed animal turtle that I gave to my dog. I had won it from a claw machine I think but I had too many stuffed animals on my bed and needed to thin down a bit. My dad walked in the room and saw my dog playing with it, and he said to me
"Hey isn't that yours?".
I replied, "Oh it's ok. I gave it to him."
Then my dad says (jokingly) "Aww poor guy! He was all happy on your bed and now Teddy's chewing on his head."
I immediately felt AWFUL and proceeded to pry the toy out of my dogs mouth and apologize to it or something. I had to stop and say to myself, "Wait banana, this is ridiculous. This is just a stuffed toy. It's not real. Your dog is the one with feelings" I still took me a little while to come to terms with this and feel okay with giving it back to my dog (who was quite upset about having the turtle taken from him).

One time I felt so sorry for the cars in a car yard, having to sit there out on display and wait for someone to buy them, with those hopeful expressions in their headlights, that I cried.