Selfish
Foreword:
Peace prevails now. There is no more turbulence. There is no more sadness. But there seems to be no more anything.
I am not missing anybody in particular, though I feel lonely as ever. It is a vast emptiness. I am being pulled inward, while my job requires me to extend outward.
The days pass by with rapidity, while the evenings are slow, and the nights are slower still to pass. No hobby seems to be captivating my time, neither a vocation. There are work worries once in a while, but they are not there to stay, and I still get on pretty well with the job.
It is conversations I lack now. The type that will keep me thinking in some line, to get my focus down to a point where I find it captivating to contemplate and argue about concepts and aspects. I make long distance calls to get such events to occur. I am no longer able to afford it. So I have given up on this whole thing of calling up people.
But people do not seem to understand the importance of such conversations to me. For them, who work in the cities have their minds full, while a provincial head like mine is starving for some intellect. They go out on weekends, have fun with friends, while I lack such company here in this God forsaken place.
It would be naïve to expect people to understand such things. It would be vain to tell them so. They would feel guilty that they have been spending less time with me, which I don’t want to happen. Some things cannot be asked for, even with friends.
My friends have surprisingly coped well with me. They still help me; call me once in a while, though I am not in the center of their consideration anymore. Nobody is to be blamed, since time and distance blur the images of even the best of friends. In spite of my disadvantageous position with people, I go into delusions of omnipotence. I do not pick up calls; I refuse to call anybody. If I do, I am very curt. This goes on for a month. Then things do fall back into place. I apologize to everyone concerned, and I start talking to people again. Very few people have cold-shouldered me when I have come back. They know that I am struggling against something. They have managed my spells of depressions very well. I am grateful to them for that.
My parents have found it difficult to cope with me, for the past year or so. I am not professing my love for them. I have differences with them, but I still care. But they sure make me feel guilty. You used to be this, that, etc. you used to send such lovely messages to me. Nobody understands that I am not sending out such signs because I am unable to do it, and not because I don’t want to.
I have changed, I don’t know if for the good or the bad. From a state of total ignorance, I now know my vices, prejudices and propensities. I know my weaknesses and limitations. I have loved and been loved, though I am not sure now. I can think now, about myself.
From perfect chaos that used to petrify me, I have descended to a state of nascent condescension. I am passively making incisive judgments about people I know very little about. My demeanor has undergone a huge change. I am no longer unassuming, but give myself airs! I am this, I am that. So respect me. Weird how this could have happened.
I am alone most of the time, even when I am with people. My mind is usually uninterested about the conversation they are having. It works or goes in a different path altogether, depriving me of the pleasure of their society. I am not listening. I am not connecting.
Sometime in between, I write, though I am unable to sustain the thought process that goes into such writings. I am lazy, my mind rather. It doesn’t want to focus on anything. It is lost with its own emotions, and would not stand still and concentrate. Even now when I am typing, I don’t know what the next paragraph is going to be. Somewhere I know what I am conveying, but I am not conscious of it. The unconscious Will is guiding me through life, taking precedence over the conscious, and I know not where I am headed. The conscious is just a tool for my unknown personality to make something happen. It feels like a puppet living with so little control over what is happening with me. It is slavery, to unknown desires and conceptions.
Who knows what I am conspiring to do tomorrow, a Sunday. There is a cricket match happening at the dealership. I have been invited to play a friendly. Would I go and play? Or would I be sitting at home tomorrow this time, and brooding over what to do? I don’t know!
I have no plans. Where do I want to be in 3 years? I don’t know. Where is my personal life headed? What are my priorities in life? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But there is peace, because I am careless with my life. There is the peace that comes about by lack of control. When there is no control, there is no worrying to be endured. I say endured, because I merely endure worries and I don’t plan to get over them. They will get over, even without my effort, because I won’t put in an effort. Such is my attitude.
The very meager control I exert over myself frustrates me sometimes. But I am happy that I don’t restrain myself over anything. I am forever in motion, though I never know which direction or how. Even a country with a megalomaniac for a king will work, produce and in the end perish, though dictated from the bowels of a demented mind.
Today I know not. Tomorrow, knowing will confer its favor on me. Then I can be enlightened. Then I can find a direction. Till then, this ship will be tossed about by the winds.
In this note, I start writing this thing. I don’t know if this will become a book. I don’t know if I will be interested in this line of thought tomorrow. I will try to make this useful to myself, though I don’t speak with the strength of an objective mind.
Selfishness:
It, I would define is, the will to further one’s interests over others’, within one’s own moral precincts. It is the instinct of survival that has been tempered by generations of collective thinking and social taming.
I would like to clarify here that I am making a fundamental differentiation between a wrongdoing and an act of selfishness. A wrongdoing is an act of moral weakness. An act of selfishness is of the will, usually with full effect, because you are doing something over the fresh grave of a conflict.
If one is not selfish, then someone else is. So one man’s selflessness never can make a difference. In the life of an ordinary man, there are many instances where he will forego a pleasure to aid someone else. If I say a no to something, then someone is taking advantage of the no. It is opportunity that goes a begging friend.
So wake up brothers, gather what is yours. They can be claimed as a right, if they are correct to your conscience. If your brother cries for your candy, don’t suck up. You deserve your candy, more than how much he thinks he deserves yours.
The conflict is with the notion of “sacrifice”. It is moral degradation that asks or waits for a sacrifice. It is lack of strength that makes a sacrifice. A duty is never a sacrifice, to be remembered. Who claims a duty to be a sacrifice is being selfish.
It is commonplace for parents to ask for gratitude from their grown up children for their duties, which are usually mistaken as sacrifices. Isn’t the whole thing a sham? I create a life, bring it up with all care, and spend time, energy and money on it. I am deriving happiness out of the whole thing, else fornication was my only motive. Then I ask the young man, my son, to marry someone he doesn’t like, to make me happy. I have set a price for my love. I have set up myself in a precarious position, where it is up to my son to keep the illusion of my sacrifice alive. If he thinks I am being unfair, he may go on in my lines, and then be proud of his sacrifice for my sake. He will demand a price for that too. Are we here to set a price for our happiness? To trade sacrifices?
Then are we here to outdo and outsmart one another, one may wonder. Gathering fruits is different from marauding an orchard. So is selfishness different from mindless acquisition. Being selfish means you pick the best fruits for yourself and not wish your neighbor ate rotten eggs. Then, what he eats need not be your worry, if that can be seen as a crime! If you have an apple to spare, you may even be charitable. Up to your appetite.
This path is difficult, for every act of self-appeasement demands a victory over a conflict. A victory over what is right and wrong, over years of conditioning. It is a struggle against a way of life. It is a bold step into a world where you are responsible, answerable and compromisable.
Taking responsibility:
Being selfish is just one of the means to be independent. This is the way that makes independence inevitable. You would have exhibited your preferences, your priorities and your intentions. You would have played your cards. You are exposed, like a diva under the focus lamp, whose shoulder straps have become undone. You can either cover your vitals and be ashamed. Or you can be light as a newborn foal, and celebrate the innocence of being naked. Your pretences have been shooed away by a momentary expansion of your real self. It is now decided! You have been branded!
You have put on display the importance you show to yourself. Now all you have to do is back it up with some resolve. This is no small a demand to make on an average individual. This is more difficult to keep than something that is earned by hard work.
When we earn something by hard work, we try hard to keep it. When we chance upon something valuable, it is a big game of chance and effort to merely keep it. Worse still, is when we get something by exercising a self-centered choice. You have been cornered now.
You can turn back and run into the arms of your chiding society, kneel down and make the act pardonable. Else you can stand your ground and take responsibility for your decision.
People will think you are mean, but they will come around. You have walked the ground that would have remained fallow to you but for your decision. You have revealed a new dimension of yourself to them, which they fear and may be even despise. They are uncomfortable.
I had got my first bonus. I was but 21, till then stifled due to my meager pocket money in college. I had money in my hands. It never occurred to give it to my parents, who were going through a lean spell. I spent it. I rejoiced. There was no remorse. No regret. I was selfish. Nobody mentioned anything of my act out of sheer respect for my emotions and my age. When I made this decision unconsciously, I had to give up the right to make monetary demands of my parents consciously. I had given out a clear signal that I am like this after I have started making money. I have always been this, but you never saw, did you? I cannot go back on it now. It is a matter of self-respect.
Does this mean I don’t love my parents? Nope. It is a reflection of my attitude towards money, independence and duty and acknowledgement. It has a deeper implication also. Have I lost something very valuable I shared with my parents? Maybe I have. Maybe not. It’s hard to do something when your priorities demand something different. We all make such choices, many, many times. We regret many of our choices. We go back to status quo. We undermine the urge that propelled the action. Would it be prudent to sit down and analyze why you made the decision? Would you feel worse going back? Is it worth going back after all?
Standing Tall:
Let me be honest, very. Simply put, no man can be not selfish at all. Selflessness is in an ideal man. Designed to make a role model for us, at a time when being selfish could have ruined a pack of hunters, who still held stones for weapons. The results of one individual wanting to exercise his interests and choices would be disastrous for the pack. Such hunters became the solitary jungle men, thrown out of the pack, and fighting for survival in a world where individual choices are violated and disrespected.
I need not be proud of being selfish, just like how I am not proud that I can be cold and unsympathetic. I need not feel self-regret and remorse for being selfish, just like how I am in equanimity with my arts and vices.
Selfishness is demonstrated through acts. Words, movements, gestures and decisions. They are the ends churned out by something as unpredictable as a human mind. The dynamics are complex to break down. The concoction is variegated by the essence of so many experiences and priorities.
People lie. People make mistakes. People do stupid things. People do bad things. People hurt. People hurt. Can an individual’s worth be measured accordingly? The answer would be a loud no among our intellectuals. The answer would be a simple yes from an ordinary man. What matters is “what do you think?”
Submitting:
We all submit, rather surrender our choices for something better. We have the choice of redepositing our choices into the “choice” bank. We can draw out new ones. We can change.
I can surrender resolve to pliability. I can surrender truth to falsehood. I can submit to a life of celibacy. I can embark on a trail of debauchery across the whole of coastal Andhra Pradesh.
We always go through a period when choices don’t seem to exist, after the surrender. There seems to be an indomitable scarcity of thought, ideas and action; of choices as such. We despair at these times. When the soul feels broken, when the heart revels in a trough, refusing to look up. There again is always the awakening. For nothing can be left untouched by evolution and growth, can it? We look about, and then amazingly, we walk again. We look for fresh choices to make. We surrender old coins that are not worth any longer, in exchange for newly issued ones.
There is a new attitude to this makeover! People do change, I believe for the good. They submit used choices to new ones. They create new vistas to themselves, where they can see a better view of their future. They rejoice the potency of their decision, proud and defiant.
Selfishness is just such a choice, made unconsciously and sometimes consciously. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is bred among us as separate entities; as money, as freedom, as desires, as power, etc. The only crime that selfishness commits on the human is that it conquers him unnoticed, when he does notice, he is in a plot inextricably complex and is daringly in the open.
He who exercises his choices with a will scares people of his potency. He plays to his strength, his smartness. He gets what he exactly wants. He makes bold decisions that decide his own fate. He is taking destiny head on. He chooses to have more control over his life than others.
He who is sure is always suspected. He who thinks for his own welfare always draws flak for his seemingly careless attitude. He who is powerful over himself is always belittled in a thousand small ways. He who is smart is always hated. We are not paragons of virtue. Vices rule our unconscious, moderated by again, taming and social instincts.
A selfish individual not only robs people of their interests, but also enjoys them right in front of the disadvantaged, all the more hurt.
Man has been so well conditioned that he will not advance his own interests till he is insecure, cornered. Insecurity may be imaginary, nothing really. He reacts like an innocent toddler clutching at fire. Will he be burnt? Or will he learn to play & revel in its warmth?
Love and Selfishness:
Love. I would not be doing justice to selfishness if I don’t think of this.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses
Your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So he shall descend to your roots and shake them
In their clinging to the earth.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then as he assigns you to his sacred fire, that
You may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you
May know the secrets of your heart, and in that
Knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s
Peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your
Nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
But not all of your laughter, and weep,but not all
Of your tears.
(On love, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran)
Love is a flight toward perfection. We become better with love. We love so that we are happy. Self-love is the basic manifestation of love. If it is not within us, it will not come out. One who is deficient in resources cannot give. Love is a conscious effort we make toward someone or something. It is not easy, just like an act of being selfish.
We usually encounter situations where we must give up something for somebody we love. My first love wanted me to quit smoking. I loved her. I did not give up. I kept a part of myself unchanged. If I give up something for something for my beloved, I am doing love’s labor. It is duty. It is duty that is performed without the slightest whimpering. We cannot be selfish to those who love because we will be doing our duty by doing what is required to be done. There is a joy to doing this; else we would not do it. If we do it out of a compulsion we will be unhappy later.
The Cause:
This is an ocean, this topic. I will try to dwell on the major points that cause acts of selfishness. I will not dwell on the psychological aspects of the development of these factors, since they are out of the scope of this text.
I would classify the reasons into two major heads. The conscious and the unconscious.
The conscious:
There are many conscious acts of selfishness. Though these are done at the nick of time, they are done with an awareness of the act and its outcomes. Such are choices made out of understanding the situation and the dynamics of the system or the group.
I remember a friend who hid some chocolates out of what he had bought for his class to give his gang. He wanted his gang to have some extra chocolates. He knew that it was harmless. He is not guilty. No one found out.
We decide to do this at the moment we actually do it. We may have been contemplating the idea for a long time. But we act like we are in a hurry. We don’t hide chocolates 2 days before, but at the moment we are going to hand it over to the teacher. Till then we are in a dilemma.
We have little or no difficulty in taking responsibility for such acts. We know we were aware of what is happening and going to happen because of the decision. It is not a trouble being reconciled to the facts.
The unconscious:
This is a gray area. We are in trouble, really! We don’t know what we are going to do, because we are unaware of the reasons and the symptoms.
Such decisions happen out of the blue. We are stupefied and amazed by our action. We are never in the know of what is going to come. We may be in perfect harmony towards a decision, when we reverse. Or we may be listening to something, and we react in a way that can be called rash.
This is where our mind as was molded during our childhood starts to take us on a voyage of discovery. The Id, the agent provocateur, as it was termed by Freud climbs a notch over the ego, the Vinod, and waves its flag proud, till the moderator gains his ground back and goes firefighting. This is when the unconscious as Jung calls it overwhelms the conscious with its suddenness of action and assertion.
This is called a slip of the tongue sometimes. Sometimes as a rash decision I want to reverse. Sometimes as “I did not mean to be selfish”. We don’t want to take responsibility. We take this to come from not the best part of us, since we don’t know where it comes from or why.
Must Selfishness be Vanquished?
Now, we will see if this needs to be branded as bad and sullied out toward extinction, else if it needs to be tolerated as another eccentricity of the human mind among many others.
Everybody is selfish. It is hypocrisy if this is refuted. It cannot be challenged. We are human beings. We need to advance, grow, and survive, most of all. The advancements and the growth become the proxies for survival when survival is taken for granted. An average man is assured of physical survival. He will normally not be beaten to death or killed by an expulsion from a group. He will live. So now, the struggle is toward a comfortable existence. I need an air conditioner badly. It has become need. It has become a hygiene factor, without which I am not happy. I want to be powerful. I want to control. I will live unless an accident happens to occur.
So we will be rarely in a position where we will be endangering the physical lives of people by being selfish. Not many people get to that position of power and potency. Being selfish will enable you to be in control, if only your conscience permitted you to be happy with the control so achieved. Being selfish will let you have better things in life. Be it a better income, a better job, a better lifestyle.
It is imperative to understand that being unselfish will not give lives to people who are in trouble. It is sometimes bad to be unselfish, just like how it is good to be selfish sometimes. After all, we may not be making much of a difference.
What would we be losing? We would be losing the goodwill of those who were affected, if it mattered to think about their lot. We would be losing our peace of mind if we believe we have been harsh. We would be losing our self worth if we think we were wrong. If this were the case, it would be best to go back on the decision, since this is a weak mind, with weaker principles and controls.
Selfishness is good. Anything that is considered bad is bad and will be regretted and fretted over. I would not call them selfish acts or motives. They are just bad things done at a time when a bad thought asserted itself.
Selfishness is an act of consciousness if planned, within the ambit of our values. If it is unplanned, it is the essence of ourselves that are exposed through an act. In both cases, it is the good part of us that is acting to do us good. It is not sick to be selfish. It is not a base character that calls itself selfish and acts so.
When selfishness creeps up from behind you, wake up. You may have your priorities wrong or neglecting your interests and well being. If you think you are unselfish, wake up. It is better to be selfish than a hypocrite.
Conclusion:
I am selfish. I am not regretting it. I am at peace when I can say this to my face and to the world. I am not lying.
It takes a change to acknowledge this. It takes an effort. It takes will to assert oneself. Change.
When we look at the cost of a sacrifice, it will always be worth not making it. Who has not regretted a sacrifice sincerely? When we look at the cost of being selfish, it is minimized by the gain of something, personally, either material or otherwise.
I have tried hard not to make this work of mine a rhetoric to promoting selfishness. I have seen the other side of the coin too. I have afforded the myth of unselfishness as much room as my own selfish mind allowed it to enjoy. In the brief time it took to write this I have gained a conviction of sorts toward this concept. I have explored more than I might have if I had had a broader thinking. Other spheres like the psychological and the metaphysical would have mired me. Let the unpredictable be unpredictable. Let them happen as they may please. But I have gone into what everyone understands. I have been simple.
Peace prevails now. There is no more turbulence. There is no more sadness. But there seems to be no more anything.
I am not missing anybody in particular, though I feel lonely as ever. It is a vast emptiness. I am being pulled inward, while my job requires me to extend outward.
The days pass by with rapidity, while the evenings are slow, and the nights are slower still to pass. No hobby seems to be captivating my time, neither a vocation. There are work worries once in a while, but they are not there to stay, and I still get on pretty well with the job.
It is conversations I lack now. The type that will keep me thinking in some line, to get my focus down to a point where I find it captivating to contemplate and argue about concepts and aspects. I make long distance calls to get such events to occur. I am no longer able to afford it. So I have given up on this whole thing of calling up people.
But people do not seem to understand the importance of such conversations to me. For them, who work in the cities have their minds full, while a provincial head like mine is starving for some intellect. They go out on weekends, have fun with friends, while I lack such company here in this God forsaken place.
It would be naïve to expect people to understand such things. It would be vain to tell them so. They would feel guilty that they have been spending less time with me, which I don’t want to happen. Some things cannot be asked for, even with friends.
My friends have surprisingly coped well with me. They still help me; call me once in a while, though I am not in the center of their consideration anymore. Nobody is to be blamed, since time and distance blur the images of even the best of friends. In spite of my disadvantageous position with people, I go into delusions of omnipotence. I do not pick up calls; I refuse to call anybody. If I do, I am very curt. This goes on for a month. Then things do fall back into place. I apologize to everyone concerned, and I start talking to people again. Very few people have cold-shouldered me when I have come back. They know that I am struggling against something. They have managed my spells of depressions very well. I am grateful to them for that.
My parents have found it difficult to cope with me, for the past year or so. I am not professing my love for them. I have differences with them, but I still care. But they sure make me feel guilty. You used to be this, that, etc. you used to send such lovely messages to me. Nobody understands that I am not sending out such signs because I am unable to do it, and not because I don’t want to.
I have changed, I don’t know if for the good or the bad. From a state of total ignorance, I now know my vices, prejudices and propensities. I know my weaknesses and limitations. I have loved and been loved, though I am not sure now. I can think now, about myself.
From perfect chaos that used to petrify me, I have descended to a state of nascent condescension. I am passively making incisive judgments about people I know very little about. My demeanor has undergone a huge change. I am no longer unassuming, but give myself airs! I am this, I am that. So respect me. Weird how this could have happened.
I am alone most of the time, even when I am with people. My mind is usually uninterested about the conversation they are having. It works or goes in a different path altogether, depriving me of the pleasure of their society. I am not listening. I am not connecting.
Sometime in between, I write, though I am unable to sustain the thought process that goes into such writings. I am lazy, my mind rather. It doesn’t want to focus on anything. It is lost with its own emotions, and would not stand still and concentrate. Even now when I am typing, I don’t know what the next paragraph is going to be. Somewhere I know what I am conveying, but I am not conscious of it. The unconscious Will is guiding me through life, taking precedence over the conscious, and I know not where I am headed. The conscious is just a tool for my unknown personality to make something happen. It feels like a puppet living with so little control over what is happening with me. It is slavery, to unknown desires and conceptions.
Who knows what I am conspiring to do tomorrow, a Sunday. There is a cricket match happening at the dealership. I have been invited to play a friendly. Would I go and play? Or would I be sitting at home tomorrow this time, and brooding over what to do? I don’t know!
I have no plans. Where do I want to be in 3 years? I don’t know. Where is my personal life headed? What are my priorities in life? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But there is peace, because I am careless with my life. There is the peace that comes about by lack of control. When there is no control, there is no worrying to be endured. I say endured, because I merely endure worries and I don’t plan to get over them. They will get over, even without my effort, because I won’t put in an effort. Such is my attitude.
The very meager control I exert over myself frustrates me sometimes. But I am happy that I don’t restrain myself over anything. I am forever in motion, though I never know which direction or how. Even a country with a megalomaniac for a king will work, produce and in the end perish, though dictated from the bowels of a demented mind.
Today I know not. Tomorrow, knowing will confer its favor on me. Then I can be enlightened. Then I can find a direction. Till then, this ship will be tossed about by the winds.
In this note, I start writing this thing. I don’t know if this will become a book. I don’t know if I will be interested in this line of thought tomorrow. I will try to make this useful to myself, though I don’t speak with the strength of an objective mind.
Selfishness:
It, I would define is, the will to further one’s interests over others’, within one’s own moral precincts. It is the instinct of survival that has been tempered by generations of collective thinking and social taming.
I would like to clarify here that I am making a fundamental differentiation between a wrongdoing and an act of selfishness. A wrongdoing is an act of moral weakness. An act of selfishness is of the will, usually with full effect, because you are doing something over the fresh grave of a conflict.
If one is not selfish, then someone else is. So one man’s selflessness never can make a difference. In the life of an ordinary man, there are many instances where he will forego a pleasure to aid someone else. If I say a no to something, then someone is taking advantage of the no. It is opportunity that goes a begging friend.
So wake up brothers, gather what is yours. They can be claimed as a right, if they are correct to your conscience. If your brother cries for your candy, don’t suck up. You deserve your candy, more than how much he thinks he deserves yours.
The conflict is with the notion of “sacrifice”. It is moral degradation that asks or waits for a sacrifice. It is lack of strength that makes a sacrifice. A duty is never a sacrifice, to be remembered. Who claims a duty to be a sacrifice is being selfish.
It is commonplace for parents to ask for gratitude from their grown up children for their duties, which are usually mistaken as sacrifices. Isn’t the whole thing a sham? I create a life, bring it up with all care, and spend time, energy and money on it. I am deriving happiness out of the whole thing, else fornication was my only motive. Then I ask the young man, my son, to marry someone he doesn’t like, to make me happy. I have set a price for my love. I have set up myself in a precarious position, where it is up to my son to keep the illusion of my sacrifice alive. If he thinks I am being unfair, he may go on in my lines, and then be proud of his sacrifice for my sake. He will demand a price for that too. Are we here to set a price for our happiness? To trade sacrifices?
Then are we here to outdo and outsmart one another, one may wonder. Gathering fruits is different from marauding an orchard. So is selfishness different from mindless acquisition. Being selfish means you pick the best fruits for yourself and not wish your neighbor ate rotten eggs. Then, what he eats need not be your worry, if that can be seen as a crime! If you have an apple to spare, you may even be charitable. Up to your appetite.
This path is difficult, for every act of self-appeasement demands a victory over a conflict. A victory over what is right and wrong, over years of conditioning. It is a struggle against a way of life. It is a bold step into a world where you are responsible, answerable and compromisable.
Taking responsibility:
Being selfish is just one of the means to be independent. This is the way that makes independence inevitable. You would have exhibited your preferences, your priorities and your intentions. You would have played your cards. You are exposed, like a diva under the focus lamp, whose shoulder straps have become undone. You can either cover your vitals and be ashamed. Or you can be light as a newborn foal, and celebrate the innocence of being naked. Your pretences have been shooed away by a momentary expansion of your real self. It is now decided! You have been branded!
You have put on display the importance you show to yourself. Now all you have to do is back it up with some resolve. This is no small a demand to make on an average individual. This is more difficult to keep than something that is earned by hard work.
When we earn something by hard work, we try hard to keep it. When we chance upon something valuable, it is a big game of chance and effort to merely keep it. Worse still, is when we get something by exercising a self-centered choice. You have been cornered now.
You can turn back and run into the arms of your chiding society, kneel down and make the act pardonable. Else you can stand your ground and take responsibility for your decision.
People will think you are mean, but they will come around. You have walked the ground that would have remained fallow to you but for your decision. You have revealed a new dimension of yourself to them, which they fear and may be even despise. They are uncomfortable.
I had got my first bonus. I was but 21, till then stifled due to my meager pocket money in college. I had money in my hands. It never occurred to give it to my parents, who were going through a lean spell. I spent it. I rejoiced. There was no remorse. No regret. I was selfish. Nobody mentioned anything of my act out of sheer respect for my emotions and my age. When I made this decision unconsciously, I had to give up the right to make monetary demands of my parents consciously. I had given out a clear signal that I am like this after I have started making money. I have always been this, but you never saw, did you? I cannot go back on it now. It is a matter of self-respect.
Does this mean I don’t love my parents? Nope. It is a reflection of my attitude towards money, independence and duty and acknowledgement. It has a deeper implication also. Have I lost something very valuable I shared with my parents? Maybe I have. Maybe not. It’s hard to do something when your priorities demand something different. We all make such choices, many, many times. We regret many of our choices. We go back to status quo. We undermine the urge that propelled the action. Would it be prudent to sit down and analyze why you made the decision? Would you feel worse going back? Is it worth going back after all?
Standing Tall:
Let me be honest, very. Simply put, no man can be not selfish at all. Selflessness is in an ideal man. Designed to make a role model for us, at a time when being selfish could have ruined a pack of hunters, who still held stones for weapons. The results of one individual wanting to exercise his interests and choices would be disastrous for the pack. Such hunters became the solitary jungle men, thrown out of the pack, and fighting for survival in a world where individual choices are violated and disrespected.
I need not be proud of being selfish, just like how I am not proud that I can be cold and unsympathetic. I need not feel self-regret and remorse for being selfish, just like how I am in equanimity with my arts and vices.
Selfishness is demonstrated through acts. Words, movements, gestures and decisions. They are the ends churned out by something as unpredictable as a human mind. The dynamics are complex to break down. The concoction is variegated by the essence of so many experiences and priorities.
People lie. People make mistakes. People do stupid things. People do bad things. People hurt. People hurt. Can an individual’s worth be measured accordingly? The answer would be a loud no among our intellectuals. The answer would be a simple yes from an ordinary man. What matters is “what do you think?”
Submitting:
We all submit, rather surrender our choices for something better. We have the choice of redepositing our choices into the “choice” bank. We can draw out new ones. We can change.
I can surrender resolve to pliability. I can surrender truth to falsehood. I can submit to a life of celibacy. I can embark on a trail of debauchery across the whole of coastal Andhra Pradesh.
We always go through a period when choices don’t seem to exist, after the surrender. There seems to be an indomitable scarcity of thought, ideas and action; of choices as such. We despair at these times. When the soul feels broken, when the heart revels in a trough, refusing to look up. There again is always the awakening. For nothing can be left untouched by evolution and growth, can it? We look about, and then amazingly, we walk again. We look for fresh choices to make. We surrender old coins that are not worth any longer, in exchange for newly issued ones.
There is a new attitude to this makeover! People do change, I believe for the good. They submit used choices to new ones. They create new vistas to themselves, where they can see a better view of their future. They rejoice the potency of their decision, proud and defiant.
Selfishness is just such a choice, made unconsciously and sometimes consciously. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is bred among us as separate entities; as money, as freedom, as desires, as power, etc. The only crime that selfishness commits on the human is that it conquers him unnoticed, when he does notice, he is in a plot inextricably complex and is daringly in the open.
He who exercises his choices with a will scares people of his potency. He plays to his strength, his smartness. He gets what he exactly wants. He makes bold decisions that decide his own fate. He is taking destiny head on. He chooses to have more control over his life than others.
He who is sure is always suspected. He who thinks for his own welfare always draws flak for his seemingly careless attitude. He who is powerful over himself is always belittled in a thousand small ways. He who is smart is always hated. We are not paragons of virtue. Vices rule our unconscious, moderated by again, taming and social instincts.
A selfish individual not only robs people of their interests, but also enjoys them right in front of the disadvantaged, all the more hurt.
Man has been so well conditioned that he will not advance his own interests till he is insecure, cornered. Insecurity may be imaginary, nothing really. He reacts like an innocent toddler clutching at fire. Will he be burnt? Or will he learn to play & revel in its warmth?
Love and Selfishness:
Love. I would not be doing justice to selfishness if I don’t think of this.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses
Your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So he shall descend to your roots and shake them
In their clinging to the earth.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then as he assigns you to his sacred fire, that
You may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you
May know the secrets of your heart, and in that
Knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s
Peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your
Nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
But not all of your laughter, and weep,but not all
Of your tears.
(On love, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran)
Love is a flight toward perfection. We become better with love. We love so that we are happy. Self-love is the basic manifestation of love. If it is not within us, it will not come out. One who is deficient in resources cannot give. Love is a conscious effort we make toward someone or something. It is not easy, just like an act of being selfish.
We usually encounter situations where we must give up something for somebody we love. My first love wanted me to quit smoking. I loved her. I did not give up. I kept a part of myself unchanged. If I give up something for something for my beloved, I am doing love’s labor. It is duty. It is duty that is performed without the slightest whimpering. We cannot be selfish to those who love because we will be doing our duty by doing what is required to be done. There is a joy to doing this; else we would not do it. If we do it out of a compulsion we will be unhappy later.
The Cause:
This is an ocean, this topic. I will try to dwell on the major points that cause acts of selfishness. I will not dwell on the psychological aspects of the development of these factors, since they are out of the scope of this text.
I would classify the reasons into two major heads. The conscious and the unconscious.
The conscious:
There are many conscious acts of selfishness. Though these are done at the nick of time, they are done with an awareness of the act and its outcomes. Such are choices made out of understanding the situation and the dynamics of the system or the group.
I remember a friend who hid some chocolates out of what he had bought for his class to give his gang. He wanted his gang to have some extra chocolates. He knew that it was harmless. He is not guilty. No one found out.
We decide to do this at the moment we actually do it. We may have been contemplating the idea for a long time. But we act like we are in a hurry. We don’t hide chocolates 2 days before, but at the moment we are going to hand it over to the teacher. Till then we are in a dilemma.
We have little or no difficulty in taking responsibility for such acts. We know we were aware of what is happening and going to happen because of the decision. It is not a trouble being reconciled to the facts.
The unconscious:
This is a gray area. We are in trouble, really! We don’t know what we are going to do, because we are unaware of the reasons and the symptoms.
Such decisions happen out of the blue. We are stupefied and amazed by our action. We are never in the know of what is going to come. We may be in perfect harmony towards a decision, when we reverse. Or we may be listening to something, and we react in a way that can be called rash.
This is where our mind as was molded during our childhood starts to take us on a voyage of discovery. The Id, the agent provocateur, as it was termed by Freud climbs a notch over the ego, the Vinod, and waves its flag proud, till the moderator gains his ground back and goes firefighting. This is when the unconscious as Jung calls it overwhelms the conscious with its suddenness of action and assertion.
This is called a slip of the tongue sometimes. Sometimes as a rash decision I want to reverse. Sometimes as “I did not mean to be selfish”. We don’t want to take responsibility. We take this to come from not the best part of us, since we don’t know where it comes from or why.
Must Selfishness be Vanquished?
Now, we will see if this needs to be branded as bad and sullied out toward extinction, else if it needs to be tolerated as another eccentricity of the human mind among many others.
Everybody is selfish. It is hypocrisy if this is refuted. It cannot be challenged. We are human beings. We need to advance, grow, and survive, most of all. The advancements and the growth become the proxies for survival when survival is taken for granted. An average man is assured of physical survival. He will normally not be beaten to death or killed by an expulsion from a group. He will live. So now, the struggle is toward a comfortable existence. I need an air conditioner badly. It has become need. It has become a hygiene factor, without which I am not happy. I want to be powerful. I want to control. I will live unless an accident happens to occur.
So we will be rarely in a position where we will be endangering the physical lives of people by being selfish. Not many people get to that position of power and potency. Being selfish will enable you to be in control, if only your conscience permitted you to be happy with the control so achieved. Being selfish will let you have better things in life. Be it a better income, a better job, a better lifestyle.
It is imperative to understand that being unselfish will not give lives to people who are in trouble. It is sometimes bad to be unselfish, just like how it is good to be selfish sometimes. After all, we may not be making much of a difference.
What would we be losing? We would be losing the goodwill of those who were affected, if it mattered to think about their lot. We would be losing our peace of mind if we believe we have been harsh. We would be losing our self worth if we think we were wrong. If this were the case, it would be best to go back on the decision, since this is a weak mind, with weaker principles and controls.
Selfishness is good. Anything that is considered bad is bad and will be regretted and fretted over. I would not call them selfish acts or motives. They are just bad things done at a time when a bad thought asserted itself.
Selfishness is an act of consciousness if planned, within the ambit of our values. If it is unplanned, it is the essence of ourselves that are exposed through an act. In both cases, it is the good part of us that is acting to do us good. It is not sick to be selfish. It is not a base character that calls itself selfish and acts so.
When selfishness creeps up from behind you, wake up. You may have your priorities wrong or neglecting your interests and well being. If you think you are unselfish, wake up. It is better to be selfish than a hypocrite.
Conclusion:
I am selfish. I am not regretting it. I am at peace when I can say this to my face and to the world. I am not lying.
It takes a change to acknowledge this. It takes an effort. It takes will to assert oneself. Change.
When we look at the cost of a sacrifice, it will always be worth not making it. Who has not regretted a sacrifice sincerely? When we look at the cost of being selfish, it is minimized by the gain of something, personally, either material or otherwise.
I have tried hard not to make this work of mine a rhetoric to promoting selfishness. I have seen the other side of the coin too. I have afforded the myth of unselfishness as much room as my own selfish mind allowed it to enjoy. In the brief time it took to write this I have gained a conviction of sorts toward this concept. I have explored more than I might have if I had had a broader thinking. Other spheres like the psychological and the metaphysical would have mired me. Let the unpredictable be unpredictable. Let them happen as they may please. But I have gone into what everyone understands. I have been simple.
posted by vinod at 3:05 AM
1 Comments:
brilliant !
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