Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here’s an idea: what if our world needs more selfishness, not less?
When someone dangerously cut me off in traffic recently, I started to get frustrated about how selfish people can sometimes be. Then it occurred to me: this wasn’t selfish behaviour. It actually stemmed from limited self-understanding, and therefore (in a curious kind of way) a lack of selfishness. As I wrote in my last post, we’re totally connected. When we consciously cause harm to someone else, we cause harm to ourself.
Similar comments could be made about “selflessness”. When people are exceptionally kind to those around them, they are sometimes described as selfless. Yet it feels great to be warm-hearted, generous and kind. We experience the benefits directly in our self. Although people are often motivated by altruistic ideals, their actions are not selfless. People are only practicing selflessness when they neglect themselves in ways that cause self-harm. This understanding is similar to the sentiment expressed by Lilla Watson (brought to my attention by my friend Marianne) when she discussed the intentions of people wanting to help aboriginal communities in Australia:
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Realising our mutual dependence, and living in ways that express it, could be described as being “selflessly selfish.” It’s an oxymoron for self-understanding. It recognises the importance of looking after ourself, without being individualistic. It’s important to express our own unique qualities and character, but we grow larger in our self when our sense of self grows. As this article expresses:
Love, empathy, compassion, and feeling all dissolve the boundaries between self/other, and help us understand and experience the fundamental reality that links us together. But it does not come through a rejection of our own individual experience. When Rilke said, “I live my life in widening circles” it is still his own life—it is just bigger, made expansive through time and experience.
Is making a distinction between selfishness and individualism playing with words? Yes! But words structure our thinking. It’s the meanings that these words conjure up, and the effect that they have, that are important. Subtle distinctions can be useful in shifting the way that we see. Plus there’s no harm in being playful. It’s actually innate to our self.
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