by Nohrie

Created on: April 08, 2010

The term selfless, examined when broken into its two parts, implies an interesting conundrum as to its meaning and affiliated action.   Less of one's inherent selfhood is to wonder if this is a positive or negative state depending on the situation where a "selfless" act has occurred. Society and its components of families, religious institutions, centers of education, all participate in the development of the myriad aspects of self.  "Building oneself up" , "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", "Putting yourself first" are all too familiar maxims we have heard and read throughout our short or long lives.   One, an antithesis of these but an oft mentioned expression is "forgetting oneself".  Perhaps this is not the worst thing at all. Assuming, for instance that an individual has led a reasonably "virtuous" life, this even being arbitrary according to cultural origins and dictums as an example, would this action of being less than one's essence or self  be something to strive toward?

The answer, I think is unequivocally, yes.  Throughout history to the current milieu of me, we are, for the most part, obsessed by and with self.  The self's desires: good and bad, tend, even in the seemingly most modest of individuals are paramount to the daily breath we take and move we make. Even in the instances of world disasters and the assistance that arrives around it in many cases ends up becoming a platform for an individual to display their SELF on the scene personifying what they may like to think is a "selfless act"  In fact, it is nothing of the sort.  It is more self aggrandizement rather than a self annihilation that is, I believe, more synonymous with selflessness.  The world as regarded as through a macro or micro cosmic perspective places its fervent interest and passion on the self, a singularity spotlighted and showcased. Though there are teams, congregations and bands, there is always the search for a star to focus on and this particular bundle of energy, inevitably, emerges. This dynamic contradicts the very concept of selflessness though.

So, it would then in a most paradoxical way, make stirring sense to think that being a player in a scenario where a selfless act is called for, hovering in the wings of the stage of life, the pivotal individual would somehow subtract from his/her self and concomitant attitudes and become fused with the "other" with humanity itself, literally and metaphysically to perform this selfless act which, in its committing, is removed from the customary and thus, magical.

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