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Remember when folks gathered around a hearth to share food and warmth? Anyone in the circle of the hearth was a friend; anyone outside, an enemy. Nowadays, things aren't so literal, but we still act according to invisible hearth boundaries. We see certain people as an extension of our self. Sharing our time, energy, and money with those people is no hardship at all. We see other people as being outside our hearth. We don't go out of our way for them, or if we do, it's because we expect something in return.

Who sits at your hearth? Is it your mother, your child, your best friend, your coworkers, the elderly neighbor who smiles at you once a day? Who's excluded? The neighbors down the street, the young man who makes your latte in the morning, children dying of hunger in a far-off country? Some folks have a hearth of only one and some have a hearth of thousands.

What does this have to do with selfishness? Merriam Webster tells us that a selfish person is "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others."

So an extremely selfish person must have a very small hearth. A less selfish person has a larger hearth, with perhaps many friends and family included. But here's the kicker: both people are behaving according to exactly the same logic. Anyone inside the hearth must be protected: anyone outside the hearth is, let's face it, really not that important!

Generally it makes us very cross when someone behaves selfishly toward uswhen they make it clear that for whatever reason, we don't sit at their hearth. We're no more important to them than that nasty man who cut us off in the fast lane is to us. We wonder why there are so many selfish people in the world and what we can do to change them. Finally, we figure people must be selfish because just don't know any better. So we tell themover and over again!

Let's see how this approach has worked so far.

Think how you respond when someone calls you selfish. Is your first impulse to say, "Why, thank you so much for pointing out that I'm selfish. Obviously, you're simply pointing out the objective truth about me with no ulterior motive. I think I'll change my behavior now!" Or do you perhaps snap, "I'm not the selfish oneYOU are!"

Then why do you expect your friends and family to react any differently when you call them selfish? Oh, of courseit's because they really ARE selfish!

Thinking of selfishness in these moralistic terms is not particularly useful. You can't make anyone less selfish; can't force anyone to expand their hearth. It's that old cliche: the only person you can change is yourself. But there is a golden prize: much, much better than some dubious reward in an afterlife, or the approval of societyor even that delicious self-righteous feeling you get when you know you've been wronged.

When you deliberately expand your hearth, inviting everybody in regardless of their behavior towards you, a funny thing happens. All the selfish people in the world magically disappear. You're relaxed, confident, friendly, and free. You're no longer constantly at war defending your hearth boundary, choosing who to let in and who to keep out, making up justifications for your own choices while calling others selfish.

The greater your hearth, the greater will be your capacity to feel joy.

Learn more about this author, Antonia Anderson.
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