I think there's a side to being selfless that actually looks selfish. Conversely, I think there's a side to being selfish that actually looks selfless.
Sometimes focusing on yourself is the most selfless thing you can do. And it took me so many years to realize that. I'm just amazed.
When you're always "thinking of the other person" and never allowing them to think of you, that's selfish. That's never allowing them the chance to do something nice for you. Never allowing them to really know you, because you're always hiding to please them.
Some people may like that better. I don't. I want people to relax around me. I want them to let me get them a glass of water without fuss. And I want them to do the same for me.
I just hate that manipulative "I'm your slave" attitude. Example:
"Are you cold? You want to go in?"
"No, I'm fine."
While their body language screams they're lying to be "selfless" for you.
LET ME LOVE YOU PEOPLE!
Does anyone else ever feel this way?
These are really small examples. This can be taken so much farther into all sorts of twisted paths. C. S. Lewis describes as a woman that waits up all night for the adult son, and says "I have to, but I don't mind, for you." It's "love" that makes him feel guilty. It's so selfish of her to wait up for him because it makes him feel guilty, not happy. And she would say she was being selfless.
“She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.” - C. S. Lewis
“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
― Gretchen Rubin
I think this false selfishness is often pride. "I can tough it out because I'm so selfless. Kudos to me." Something like that.
I've done it before. And I never want to do it again.
I think this goes hand in hand with believing that our desires are naturally bad.
"Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink, sex, and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C. S. Lewis
I believe it wholeheartedly and I want to look honestly at my desires and run in the path they create for me.
Most desires lead us back to God, you know.
If I desire something I shouldn't... say, comfort food... that's not my real, real desire. My true desire is for comfort, because something went wrong or I feel lonely or I feel afraid. I need to be comforted. God is the only lasting source of comfort, so my true desire is for God himself. My body is just craving food as an easier (and often less convicting) source of immediate comfort.
Food is false comfort.
Et cetra.
Another one... I might desire to know what I'm doing next after... let's say High School for this illustration. Part of that could be the realistic need to know what's happening next. Part of it might be a want, a want for security. If I'm nervous about the future, I'm desiring security. God is the only thing that's absolutely secure. So I'm desiring God himself, I'm just craving the instant satisfaction of "knowing" what will happen, (despite the fact that we never really know what will happen).
'Knowing' the future is false security.
I might desire to have a good reputation, to have people think well of me. This is something God called out in me this summer. The reputation is not the problem. It's the craving for it.
What are we really craving?
Our desire for good reputations precedes {from a desire to be thought well of, which proceeds} from a desire to be loved. Only God can love you perfectly.
A good reputation is false love.
You think everyone loves you because everyone thinks you're perfect.
Living honestly is never going to be living perfectly. And very few people are going to mistake your openly-lived life for perfection.
But. that's. o. k.
We need to live openly, letting others know our needs, doubts, successes, fears, and joys.
But it gets in the way of my loving you.
I don't know how to love around this. When I encounter it in someone, I get a hopeless feeling in the pit of my stomach.
How do you love someone who won't be loved??
Keep chipping at the wall of ice, I guess.