On Being Selfish

Dated Sept. 2016

“What is your wish for the future?”

I have to send in a video of my response, along with 250 other students from across the country. Each of our responses are then edited and spliced together to form one long promotional video. The committee calls us the new face of the company. They call us the new generation of bright young leaders.

What is your wish for the future? I think about it for a little while, and finally settle on the following: 1) finding a successful career, 2) marrying a loving partner, and 3) caring for a happy and healthy family. I blank after that. What more do I need?

Weeks later, the 250 of us convene in a ballroom in DC to watch the finished video. Part of me is excited to see myself on a huge screen in front of 250 people. The other part of me is horrified for the same reason.

The video begins. I see the faces of different people I met throughout the week. What is your wish for the future? They say inspiring things like:

“Paving the way for others to follow my footsteps.”

“Living with authenticity.”

“Speaking on behalf of people who don’t have the opportunity to speak.”

“Working together and create an impact.”

“Making equal opportunity for all a reality.”

The video continues. My clip hasn’t come on yet. A slight feeling of dread comes over me. Not because they haven’t shown my clip, but because I don’t want them to show my clip. Compared to the other people’s responses, mine seems embarrassingly lame.

The video ends. My clip wasn’t included in the video. I sigh in relief, but there’s still a lingering feeling of dread and guilt. Everyone is so selfless. They’re all so passionate about serving their community. They all want to make a difference in the world, and here I am greedily hogging the future’s wishes all for myself. How pathetically selfish of me.

The guy sitting across the table leans in and whispers, “Hey, they didn’t show your clip! That’s not fair.” I give him an easy smile and shrug casually. “Oh well, maybe next time.” I joke on the outside, but I feel like some sort of sick monster on the inside. The worst part isn’t even that I chose to wish for a job/husband/kids over something for the greater good. The worst part is that the thought of societal need didn’t even occur to me. Am I really that self-centered?

The funny thing is that people say I’m the kind of person who always puts others before herself. They call me “selfless.” I get this awful feeling deep down that I’m not as “selfless” as they say I am. It’s a tangled mess of embarrassment and guilt. I feel like I’m putting on a show of lies.

The next day, we all head over to the American Red Cross Headquarters to package items for deployed troops. I open a plastic baggie, drop in a bottle of shampoo, some soap, a comb, a toothbrush, some lotion, and a small American flag. I write a note to the unnamed troop: Thank you for all that you do! Your courage and bravery protects us each and every day!

After we power through assembling all 1000 baggies, we cheer. Gail McGovern, CEO of the American Red Cross, claps for us and gives us a motivational speech. “You are all such kind, selfless young leaders who are stepping up to make a difference in the community.” Or something to that effect. I have to admit, it helps me feel a little less awful about my wish for the future. It’s as though this hour of actively serving the community has canceled out the previous day’s guilt. Why should I feel guilty about it anyway? I enjoy serving people when I can. I enjoyed doing this today. I’m helping out the troops. I’m having a good time. If I was truly a selfish person, this activity should’ve made me cringe (or something showing equal distaste). I’m not selfish, I tell myself. I like helping people. I like serving my community. I’m not selfish…

Normally when someone is having an existential crisis, they either text their friend or call their mom or talk to their dog. I am not like normal people. I am like most people. I Google stuff. Real people are too unreliable. They tell you that you’re thinking too much, that you’re just wallowing in self-pity. Somewhere in the 0s and 1s of my expensive hunk of metal, there has to be someone to help me escape my wallow of self-pity. I find David Foster Wallace.

“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?” — David Foster Wallace

The comfort of hearing my thoughts in words is overwhelming. The comfort of hearing my thoughts in the words of David Foster Wallace is doubly overwhelming. It’s an odd humanistic sort of connection. If it’s okay for someone like David Foster Wallace to be wallowing in self-pity and worrying about bullshitting himself, then it surely must be okay for the common folk.

And I think that’s what it is. I think I’ve been bullshitting myself. I say I like serving others because I want to make the world a happier place. I actually like serving others because it makes me a happier person — it helps me feel good about myself. It wins me the approval of other people. It gives me instant gratification. It fuels my selfishness. Service is my very own bullshitting mechanism.

If serving others fuels my selfishness, and making greedy self-centered wishes for the future labels me as selfish, is there anything I can do that wouldn’t render me selfish? Or am I doomed to be a selfish person?

Being a teenager with a reasonably active social life, I decide to share my newfound wisdom with my peers. I post Wallace’s quote on Instagram and wait for the likes to start rolling in. The irony kills me, but it’s a necessary irony. I have to show that being selfish isn’t a bad thing.

It’s settled. I’m a selfish person. But another question still remains. Am I a good person? I arrive at the conclusion that being selfish and being good aren’t mutually exclusive actions. One can be selfish and good at the same time. In fact, it’s pretty important to be selfish. Now I tell myself, I have to serve myself first in order to serve others. If I can’t serve myself, then how can I serve others? Putting myself and my self interests first is selfish, but I don’t see it as a bad thing anymore. I have to be selfish in order to be of help to others, in order to be selfless.

The likes start accumulating. I see a comment that someone posted. He thanks me for helping him with his dilemma, one that seems eerily similar to my video clip incident. The irony paid off. I have to be selfish in order to be selfless. If posting a David Foster Wallace quote on Instagram to see how many likes I can gather is selfish, then using that very post to help someone sort through their dilemma is selfless. I never thought I would say this, but I’m selfish and I’m glad of it.