IS IT SAFE TO LOOK AT THE MOON?

What Makes Us Selfish?

Today I am reminded of things that we sometimes forget: like telling your adult children you love them; like saying sorry when you've hurt someone's feeling; like doing something for someone who needs help; like loving someone.

What is it that makes us selfish? Are we born selfish? Did we acquire selfishness? Did we teach ourselves to be selfish? Are we by nature selfish?

What is it that makes us selfish? There is a story about a woman who admitted she was selfish. She said she needed to be selfish because her family was selfish, especially her mother. She realized early on her mother did not care for her at all - nor did she care for the rest of the family. All she cared for was her husband. She did not want him to love anyone else, not even the children, because she wanted his love all to herself. She did not want to share her husband with anybody else - most especially her children. Was that the ultimate of selfishness?

Is it wrong to be selfish? Let's look at this mother who loves her husband, and did not want to share her husband's love with her children. Was she wrong? Why did she not want to share her husband's love with her children? Why did she have children in the first place? Because her husband wanted children? But there is such a thing as contraception or a surgery that would remove her reproductive organs. Was she wrong to be selfish?

People have their own ideas of things, especially things that concern their feelings of love, hatred, pity, sympathy. If the daughter experienced the selfishness of her mother, do we condemn her for hating her mother? Do we conclude that one day when she does marry, that she will become like her mother?

Selfishness, what art are thou?