Frankly Put: The Selfless Itch of Selfishness
This one is a bit of an odd one to write, I must admit. Slightly more selfish, so to speak. Then again this whole blog is selfish, now that I think about it. Screw it.
Fundamentally, this writing thing is not really for the masses. It was not conceptualized as an appeal to the masses. It was a personal endeavour for personal gain and I am learning to retake many other parts of my life in the same way. I am trying to allow myself the sweet taste of selfishness on occasion. I suppose all the more reason why I can say “Welcome to my corner of the internet.” I have selfishly colonised these 1s and 0s, which I get to permit guests. Since you are here, engage me.
There is this shame to being selfish; as a child, it was so deeply ingrained in the teachings that it was hard to step back from selflessness until you were so deep in generosity that it killed you to give any more of yourself. They say that too much of anything is bad, that also blatantly includes good things. Too much sugar could lead to cavities and in this day and age, a strain of diabetes. Too much light, blindness. So on and so forth. In the same way, this generosity could be a corrupt undertaking past a certain point.
I like to observe the fringe behaviours of the good. It isn’t about the bad or the grey these days. Those, admittedly, are commonplace. It has gotten to the point where it’s abnormal not to have vices and morally grey pursuits. It is interesting to think that we can push good until its elastic limit and it deforms worse than bad. I think that one can be such a bad person that they inevitably become a good person, as weird as it seems. So I am fascinated by the bad trying to be good and the good turning to bad.
Back to generosity, I have been thinking about this even beyond monetary and material things. You can be generous with say… your time. It’s a bit of a stretch to think about how something like this could be taken to a selfish extreme. Well, walk with me in this reality that could be. A person is generous with this very finite resource. You only have 24 hours in a day. As my lecturer would say, “Time. The only thing we all have but not enough of.”
What if you give all of that away? You’d be left with nothing but the idea of borrowing from the future, in which you would be stealing time that is not yours; for you cannot budget what is not in your hand. Further down the line, you accrue a debt of time that cannot be repaid and you are forced to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Peter will demand his remuneration for he too is sharing this finite resource with you from his bag. Paul will not be satisfied with your measly payment and will demand your full refund. What would this look like? It’s almost a no-brainer. Burnout, of course. A return on investment, I would not recommend.
That is just but one example. See, shame is a selfish fiend. It makes me look at people sideways when people’s advice is to “be more selfish.” The logic behind the advice is very sound but is difficult to resolve within myself. I don’t know where the child who had an indifference to life went but when he did, he went away with the part of me that was inclined to care for self first. I have had many a friend get angry at me when I have exhibited so much selflessness that has negatively impacted my life experience.
Don’t get me wrong, “No.” is not an unfamiliar taste on my tongue. I think that the selfishness that I struggle with is the taking. I can refuse to share things but I think that I have trouble viciously taking things for myself these days. Let’s go back to the concept of time because that is where we started. I have no problem telling people “This is time for me, do not encroach,” or “I don’t have time for that,” which I think is a very fair argument. The idea of making people make time for me… that’s where I hesitate a little bit.
This is a little ironic because I am definitely that “I can make time friend/lover/colleague/leader” but unless it’s a little bit strict, "Make time for…” is tricky. I did have a riveting conversation with a friend once where they asked me, “What if you just turned your selflessness to yourself?” The conversation went round in circles until it seemed to lead to the train of thought that your selflessness could be so extreme it becomes selfish. Be so giving of yourself that you return to yourself with more than you left.
It seems counterintuitive but the more I sat with it the more I could twist my neck just enough to see some sense in it. I suppose all along, selflessness is a selfish desire. We do this altruistic thing because it makes us feel good and we chase that dopamine. Why not switch gears and accept that in some way, we deep down hope that the good we do will trickle right back to us even when we say we do not expect anything back? That the time we so graciously give will pay back our debt in time. Someone we give our time to, will give us their time.
Unconditionally, we give. In some cases, unconditionally we can take. That we give back to ourselves with the same perspective as the one we hold when we approach people we love. So the turning needle spins that we look at the selflessness of being selfish.
Is it possible that in some spaces, our selfishness is actually an act of selflessness? Selflessness to self. This is just some selfless itch of selfishness… to put it Frankly.
