Monday, March 15, 2010

My Needs or a Friend’s Needs

What does one have to do to be known as selfish? I have heard many of my close friends explain that being selfish means caring only about your main ideas. I however think that being selfish is thinking about your own self and not caring about other people around you. I assume when someone is being selfish they push other people out of the way to reach what they want in life Take a good look at your life: are all your thoughts and actions being selfish and you haven’t even realized it?


I have been following Tony Anders who is a very wise man and writes many popular blogs. Anders has been through a lot of different experiences in his life. Anders owns his own business, has a family, is writing a book, is engaged in much more. In “Am I being Selfish?” Anders explains when being selfish is wrong. But, Anders also states when it is okay to be selfish when we’re dealing with our health, faith, or money. Anders tries to figure out if people are selfish only because they are after their goals. Anders tries to figure out what it truly means to be selfish. He finally comes to the main point that being selfish means “chiefly concerned with one’s own interest, advantage, especially to the exclusion of the interests of others.” While I think being selfish is meeting your own needs instead of helping someone else. Being selfish never has a positive outcome. When someone is being selfish there is always a chance for pain, jealously, and other mix up feelings that people must deal with. While when we give up our pride of being selfish and help someone out we receive this joy in our heart of helping someone.
Anders also talks about being pleased for “righteous efforts are not selfish.” You should feel good about yourself when accomplish a goal you had. Instead of feeling guilty about accomplish your biggest goal. Anders feels like his needs should come before others when working towards a particular goal in life.
Anders blog about being selfish, I will have disagree with Anders. I do not agree when Anders says “ I believe people should steal someone else’s joy” while I believe we should be happy when they accomplished a goal instead of being rude about and being mad that they accomplished something before us. We should help others reach their goal. We would get a whole lot more done in this world if we were to help another person out. Instead of filling our own wants. I think that if we gave up some of our selfishness this world would be a much better place to live in. All because we could give people who have the talent and passion to want to achieve a goal but never have an opportunity to. These people would do a whole lot more with it if we were much less selfish.

I have been very selfish toward one of my best friend named Kaitlynn. But when I started to act selfish things started to turn upside down. I ended up dating two of her friends. And though I did not know at the time, she had a huge crush on one of them.

This is where I have to tell you, that I was not a very good friend here. To be honest, I did not mind the boy’s interest. I dated one of them for a short while without mentioning it to Kaitlin. If I could go back, I would have never dated him, but at the time I had it all rationalized. Now imagine you are Kaitlin and you have a crummy friend like me. We all had different outlooks on this situation. I admit that I never should have hurt Kaitlin like I did.

Anders asks the question “When is selfishness wrong?” Well selfishness is wrong when you take a dream from a friend and it doesn’t mean as much to you as it would to them. Is it worth all the pain to hurt a really close friend? I personally do not think it is worth all the pain. My point is that there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones, you might as well hold on to them. You know?

Word of Wisdom: Hope for your friends’ successes.



2 comments:

antoniolampkins said...

This post has made me stop and think what i feel being selfish is. When I first read Anders statement about how being selfish was to achieve ones goal, I realized that he may be partially true. Although I can agree that you and Anders make a good argument, I would have to agree with your perception of being selfish.It does seem as if a selfish act occurs, usually someone is hurt in some way. I do agree with your idea that the world would be a better place if everyone worked together and helped each other out with their goals.

Cap'n Fatback said...

Stephanie--

Hmm. Some more paragraph formatting issues here. I'm sure that's due to the copy & paste issue with Word.

Also, I would link Anders's article to its title in your second paragraph.

Nice link choices and photo choices again, though.