Self-pity

I used to think that of my various character flaws (of which, I’m sorry to say, there are too many) the greatest and most evil was selfishness. Selfishness is indeed something against which I struggle, not always very successfully. But latterly I have begun to wonder whether, even more than ‘selfishness’ broadly conceived, my main character flaw isn’t more specifically self-pity. It flows from selfishness, of course, but is different to it, and in its way more corrosive.