-ism: State of being
Egoism: Being the Self. -- An inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others.
Selfishness: Being concerned only with yourself and your advantage while excluding and disregarding all others.
Think about it. If you covet your neighbor's wife, you are motivated by wanting to fulfill your needs without caring about your neighbor's wellbeing. You want to fulfill your desires so badly that you don't even think about the effect it will have on your neighbor's life.
Stealing is the most obvious display of selfishness.
We, as a society have gone astray.
We go by our days completely preoccupied with our own individual well-being to the exclusion of everyone else, even our own direct family -- even our own children.
As long as long as we get satisfaction, we don't even think about anyone else. Who cares if another is hungry? Who cares if someone is broke? -- As long as it's not us.
But when it is us, man do we cry! If we're in any kind of discomfort, we will kick and scream like there's no tomorrow even if our little discomfort is nothing compared to real pain of the people around us.
We can walk by the hungry and homeless while we cry about a cold Latte or the lack of a good cellphone signal.
It's all about me.
Me me me me me. No one else exist.
This is the real root of all evil, the road to perpetual depression and sorrow.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says:
"Where does the depression come from?The secret to happiness is to get your head out of your self and start looking out at others around you. When you really see what others are going though, you own petty problems start to fall off and disappear.
Just sitting and thinking what about me, what about me? This is a technique to get depressed.
You just sit and just think about only yourself. Oh, what about me, what will happen to me?"
People used to care about each other, about their friends, about their neighbors.
Now we don't know who are neighbor are. We don't really know who are most of our so-called friends are!
We don't know because we don't care. As soon as someone starts telling us about their problems, we think, "Woah! Hold on there buddy. This is not that kind of party. That's way too much information."
We don't want to hear anything uncomfortable. We don't want them to get us depressed.
We want to keep it all superficial. No swapping sob-stories or crying on anyone's shoulders. That would be bad... that would make us feel bad.
And this may very well be the reason why many people are addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol. Back in the day, not so long ago, you went to your friends for support. It was expected that a good friend was a good listener -- someone to lean on, a shoulder to cry on.
When people no longer have that outlet of getting things off their chest and getting some advice from a good friend, they keep it all bottled up, and get depressed, and get sick and die young.
Repressing negative emotions are the main source for stress, anxiety and disease (dis-ease). Scientists and researchers are "discovering" this now.
So stop thinking about your self and start thinking about others.
Start with your direct family -- Start easy.
Call your mom and ask her how she's doing. Really listen to what she says and offer to help in any way you can, then follow through and DO IT.
When you're watching TV and your child wants to talk to you, Don't snap at her, turn off the TV and see spend some time with her. You'd be surprised at how much we neglect our children by being engulfed in a stupid TV show.
You'd be surprised at how many times your child has talked to you and you completely missed it because you were so immersed in watching TV, or checking your email, or arguing with your spouse, or just plain immersed in your own egoism and self-pity.
We have to go back to basics, back to the good old days of a friendly, helpful community, back to the family, back to sharing, back to caring... back to basics.
Copyright © 2008 by Ray Diaz - All Rights Reserved.
