3.6 Not selfish or selfless but self-nurturing
Do you want to be happy?
Be selfless.
Do you want to be fulfilled?
Serve others.
How many times have you heard this advice? As if it’s holy writ.
Sure, you can find a lot of happiness in making the lives of other people better. But that’s a very different thing than selflessness.
“Selfless” literally means…
No self.
It means that you don’t take yourself into account. Your needs don’t matter. You’re sacrificing yourself for others.
And if you become truly selfless, that means you’ve turned yourself into…
A nobody.
In the New Testament, there’s that story where Christ instructs a man to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor. Taken at face value, that’s the perfection of selflessness.
But Christ couldn’t have meant literally everything because…
That level of selflessness would be suicidal.
You’d have to sell all your clothes and all your food. And if someone gave you clothes and food to make up for what you sold, you’ve have to sell those replacements, too, and right away.
Which means you wouldn’t be able to serve anybody, because you’d starve and be dead.
I’m hoping Christ didn’t mean for his followers to commit suicide, but rather was promoting a general point about making it your priority to care about others rather than accumulate wealth and possessions.
What about the gurus who preach selflessness? Some of them are quite the contradiction. I’m thinking about the ones who have a zillion followers and are making big money. They’re not practicing what they preach, because they’re not selfless, because if they were, they’d be so self–effacing we’d never have heard of them.
The idea of selfless service doesn’t add up. Nor does the idea of a selfless relationship. Think about this. If you’re in a relationship with a nobody…
Who exactly are you supposed to love?
And what about two selfless nobodies together. How is that supposed to work?
What about selfless intimacy? That’s an oxymoron because intimacy takes two people who’ve both developed depth of character and richness of personality so…
They each have a lot to give.
Deciding to be selfless is a terrible thing to do to yourself. It’s self–abnegation, which in turn makes it impossible for you to have caring, sustaining relationships with others.
Selflessness, then, is not the secret key to happiness but to…
A loveless life.
Our tribal ancestors didn’t ask anyone to be selfless, because they understood that a tribe of selfless people would be dead and gone in short order. And in fact, each tribe had a very, very strong sense of self as a tribe.
Selflessness is said to be the opposite of selfishness and therefore a good thing. But that’s just not true.
The real opposite to both selfishness and selflessness is…
Self-nurturing.
Wanting the best for yourself does not make you selfish. Selfish is when you want the best only for yourself and not for anyone else. Or you’re okay getting the best for yourself at the expense of others.
But if you believe that along with yourself, everyone deserves nurturance, if you believe in that as a principle, not as an occasional act of charity, but as a consistent core moral principle, and you live by it, then you’ll be…
Generous with your caring.
And your light will shine, and you will be a blessing to the people in your life.
