Recent Musings:
A pity party.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I've been researching this selfish notion a bit to try to determine if I am as selfish as I've been accused, since I don't think I am. I used an online dictionary and began researching all sorts of words related to 'self,' just to check them out to see if I could find myself in any one in particular. I did find one; this definition was my favorite:
Self-pity: the self-indulgent belief that your life is harder and sadder than everyone else's.
While I think the definition itself is quite comical (it sounds a lot like Eeyore), I realized that perhaps what others see in me as selfishness is not selfishness at all, but rather the product of self-pity.
Even though I do not pity myself constantly, I do know there are moments that arise when I start to think that my survival in life is greater and more important than others' survival. I forget that others may be reflecting on their lives and struggling as well through difficult dilemmas, through tricky financial situations, through unknown personal insecurities, through challenged spiritual contradictions.
I will admit, therefore, that I can be selfish and do pity myself, but I can also be selfless and uninhibited within my own needs. I am both, selfish and selfless. I lean toward selfishness when my self-pity kicks in, but I also lean toward selflessness when I am aware of others' needs as equal or greater than mine. And although I don't like to be in either extreme, I know that I am not defined by one definition or the other, one weakness or one strength. I am middle - well, at least I try to be.
There is a catch, however, and it comes in when we are forced to admit that sometimes our own life is truly harder and sadder than everyone else's, for however brief or long of a moment. As we all know, this really does happen in life.
I'm stuck trying to find a positive spin for this reality; perhaps the trick is to see yourself as equal and similar to others, that any fate that befalls someone else can also happen to you in an instant (think Hurricane Katrina). Perhaps if I can focus on the reality that we're all just surviving through the day, then I can be able to help others survive the same amount as I survive.