Selfishness is a myth
Perhaps the greatest hurdle to overcome when seeking to live a fully autonomous life is the fear of being viewed as SELFISH. That word conjures up all manners of personal and professional sabotage for anyone wanting to be viewed as a kind or conscious human being.
So when I ask clients this question - “If you’re not living for YOU, who are you living for?” I know most are instantly going to want to give me the pageant girl answers – “my family, my husband, my children, my church, my clients, or my community. I live for them.”
And it sounds so pretty on paper, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s actually toxic codependency and yet another example of the cockblock of propriety; that which we have been taught is acceptable. Further complicating this is the issue of whose version of proper and acceptable are we supposed to hold as the standard? And where did they get their standards?
There’s now a devastating epidemic of a stigma in this present culture surrounding the word SELFISH. Tragically, it was never meant to be that way. Miriam Webster defines selfish as: “arising from concern with one’s own welfare.” At its core or base root, the word selfish implies being conscious of or paying attention to Self…being aware of Self. To You or the flesh and blood body holding your true essence, what the Greeks called a psyche and the English translated as soul but science tends to refer to as consciousness anyway.
I would venture to guess that’s NOT how you experience that word when it’s directed towards you by those disapproving of whatever your free will is currently trying to express though is it?
Back in the 17th century, Presbyterians are said to have been the first to use the word in its current form, forever infusing religious connotation in the construct of autonomy and what we do with it. Let’s take a moment and think about what was happening in the 1600’s though.
Shakespere was big, we had wars all over the place, including people fleeing England and an oppressive monarchy and Church. Puritanicalism saw many innocent individuals tried and killed as witches on both sides of the Atlantic. The King James Bible was printed and Galileo discovered Jupiter, but was later forced by the Inquisition to recant his belief in Copernican theory (that all planets revolve around the sun… even though he knew and had proven so, again just goes to show what devastating effects peer pressure can have). Don Quixote de la Mancha, the first modern novel, was written by Cervantes and Milton published Paradise Lost, widely considered the greatest epic poem in English. Rene Descartes was also propelling philosophy into a whole new era with his edict of a distinction between the human soul and the body, known as the theory of dualism.
All that to say, there was interesting historical context encompassing divisive tensions between the old ways of tradition, religion, and even superstition, and the advent of free thinkers setting the stage for what came to be known as the Enlightenment Period or Age of Reason. Globally, we were growing up if you will and yet feeling quite conflicted about it.
Language can never be separated from the culture who uses it. So to that end, in the 17th century, synonyms for selfish came to include self-seeking, self-ended and self-full… self-full… full of self.
The need for individuation
But I ask you, how could it ever be that to be full of self is a bad thing? I mean, certainly not in its purest and most balanced form, right?
Let’s start with the most basic example commonly accepted in our society – the instructions aboard every aircraft for what to do in case of emergency. The steward or stewardess instructs us to place our own oxygen masks on first before turning to help our loved ones or those around us. This is completely counterintuitive to most human beings and certainly to every parent ever. The directive and reasoning is clear though – we are no good to anyone else if we don’t care for ourselves first. No good! We literally run out of air, our very life force.
We can ONLY help others when we help ourselves, right? Ok. So is this selfish?
We can only ever truly be autonomous when we separate ourselves from others’ thoughts, opinions, behaviors, desires, and more. In psychology we call this INDIVIDUATION.
It doesn’t mean we are in denial or that we somehow don’t care. In fact, it’s the opposite that is most true! It’s BECAUSE we care, (so much so even!) that we are willing to own our desires. You gotta own them! To explore them and take full responsibility for them. It is the BEST gift we can give ourselves and the world.
The gift of our own path. Of individuation. For it is there that we can be fully present with everyone around us. We free them up to be fully themselves and not beholding to us in any way. And that, you see, is where deep sacred intimacy of all kinds awaits. The type of intimacy that forever connects mother to child, lover to its beloved, and activist with a cause.
The case for pleasure
If you’re willing to look yourself in the mirror and ask, “What am I pretending not to know about myself?” and then take action on what your soul whispers back, you’ll be further ahead than 95% of your peers. It takes gall to be authentic to one’s desires and yet, once you start, you’ll find it to be one of the easiest ways to earn the money, deepen your relationships, and enjoy the sex you’ve always wanted.
