I’ve had a conversation this morning that has prompted this musing. What does it mean to be selfish? What is being selfish? And who gets to say what is selfish and what isn’t? And what is the relationship between selfishness and martyrdom?
The official definition of selfish is of a person who is “lacking consideration for other people; concerned purely with one’s own pleasure or profit”. But I’ve heard another one which is interesting. That, paraphrasing, selfish is what you are called when you’re not doing that which someone else wants you to do. Both are at the polar opposite to each other and, as always, I think there is more truth in the common ground than complete other ends of the spectrum.
Take, for example, someone who enjoys to drink alcohol a lot and regularly. Is it selfish to want them to stop and, if they don’t, to decide to leave? Is the person drinking in that way selfish or is the person who wants them to stop or who walks away from it the selfish one? Because both are purely concerned with their own viewpoint and both are not doing that which the other wants them to do. One is still drinking and likely wanting the other person to tolerate it and keep the status quo, and the other wants to not have to deal with it anymore. And from that perspective…aren’t we all selfish?
This is where, I think, martyrdom comes into the picture. The person who doesn’t drink could put up with it and stay. But in the process become the martyr. The one who ‘puts up’ with the fallout of the person who drinks and sticks around for a variety of reasons. Perhaps children are in the picture who do not want their parents to separate. This person has to give up their dreams in order to keep the status quo. But is that something that is, even at a subconscious level, done willingly really? Because if we really want something, don’t we put our all into it to achieve it? That can even be the thing that’s driven at the subconscious level, the desire for what we truly want. But if you’re not doing that, if you’re tolerating behaviour that you find to an extent repulsive, then what is that saying to you about you?
Who judges selfishness? I remember as a child my mother judging women who left their families to find themselves as being selfish. Not something she would ever do. But what drove those women to leave their families? Behaviour by their husbands that they could no longer tolerate? Knowing that they were staring down the barrel of more of the same for decades potentially? That everything they wanted to do and achieve was being put aside for the sake of a family that wasn’t working how it should because another wasn’t fulfilling their end of the bargain? Does anyone know how these women wrestled with these decisions and for how long? I get that feeling of not wanting to be part of the Stepford Wife clique where everyone goes around with rictus grins on their faces hoping it hides their misery while inside they slowly die because all they are doing is fulfilling society’s expectations. Because they will be judged and called selfish if they do anything different to what is ‘expected’ of them.
We have become conditioned to living in a certain way. We go to school, we sit exams, we might get further qualifications, we get a job, we get married, we buy a house, we have children, we continue to work, we don’t spend quality time with each other because everything is in pursuit of this ‘dream’ that we are all supposed to have. We become corporate drones to financially afford this ‘dream’, always spending to our limits and wondering why we feel unfulfilled when this is supposed to be what everyone wants. Living in the same house as everyone else on the identikit estate, driving a slightly different version of the same car as everyone else. Sleepwalking through a life we do not question. Because if we do, the whole house of cards could come toppling down. Then what are we left with?
I can tell you what you are left with. You are left with the need to begin to truly understand who you are. What your drivers are, what is important to you, what you are prepared to tolerate and what you’re not, what your true purpose is, trying to connect again with the people around you, seeing the (for wont of a better expression) Matrix for what it truly is. A trap. Seeing that there is another way and going through the, admittedly painful, process of finding what that is. Not deadening our inner voice with alcohol, food, sex, or drugs. Not filling silence with noise because we’re scared of what we will hear from our Higher Self.
That’s not selfish, it’s purpose. Will you be judged for it, and harshly? Absolutely, you will. That can cause you to give up on the process and go back to what is familiar and to what people expect of you. Make yourself small, postpone yourself or even contort your round peg to fit the square hole for the rest of your life. That is your choice, you have free will, and you should never be judged for your choices whichever way you make them. No one else will ever walk in your shoes anymore than you will walk in theirs.
Is there truly anything such as selfish? I don’t know. I think you can make an argument for and against but usually you’re making the argument for because the person you have in mind has done something you didn’t agree with, or didn’t do something you wanted them to do, or because you judge their life choices. Personally? I think it’s a societal construct made to keep you in line. It’s only when you step out of that line are you accused of it, so ask yourself. Is it real?
What is the answer? It isn’t easy. Being human isn’t always easy because we make choices all the time and sometimes those choices are about satisfying ourselves alone and other times those choices are about suppressing what we want for a greater ‘good’. There is, though, a middle ground. We can still do what feels right for us without giving up who we truly are. If we are considerate of other’s feelings, if we take on board what is being said to us, we can agree a compromise approach. We do live in a collective, after all. But it should be a collective where we come together in all our individualism, not where these invisible ‘rules’ are applied to keep us as automatons. I keep asking myself – who made these rules up and why? – and I keep coming back to my books. The answer is in them if you’d like to take a look – strictly no spoilers here!!
The next time you accuse someone of being selfish, or think it, or the next time someone accuses you of being selfish stop and think. What are the circumstances around it? Are they really being selfish? Or are you. And in that process, ask – is there any such thing as selfishness?
Louisa Simpson 