Are you selfish?
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." ~ Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Selfish? We can be generous, loving, liberal and openhanded while still being "selfish."
Generosity and selflessness are not the same.
If we are selfless, we are without a self. Look up the definition of selfless: adjective -having no concern for self. In the past I have given up things I loved, things that were a natural, essential part of my personality, to please someone else. I became self-less. I changed myself to suit him, only to find the new me didn't suit either him or myself.
I threw away large parts of my true, original self because I was led to believe (by the man I loved) that I would become more lovable/loved if I did so. I gave and gave of parts of my essential self until there was nothing left, and that still wasn't enough for him. I ended up empty, unhappy with myself - and he was unhappy with the changed me, too, and he didn't love or respect me any more than he ever had. The fact is, if he had loved me to begin with, he wouldn't have insisted I change myself to suit his whims. I actually heard him bragging to his friends about how he was "molding" me into the "perfect wife".... He's been my ex-husband for more than ten years now. Imagine that.
If I had loved me to begin with, I wouldn't have even thought to change my original, essential self to suit anyone but me.
I can only count on one person being with me for the rest of my life - myself. Is it then selfish to take good care of myself?
If we are selfless, if we have no self, then we have little or nothing of value to offer any other human being. We can only give to others from what we have in your heart and soul, inside the self. Is it not then more loving, of both self and others, to first fulfill our own essential* needs and desires, to put on our own oxygen mask first, to nourish and nurture ourselves, and to encourage others to choose to do the same for themselves....
*Essential - of essence - implies belonging to the very nature of a person or thing, and therefore is incapable of removal without destroying the person or thing, or its character.
posted by phoenix @ 1:52 PM
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