Blogfish (A blog that is selfish)

In a world of selfishness, a city of shallowness, and a circle of self-involvement I hesitate to even relay the experience from my last post and then proceed to use this post to comment on it.

In my world, when you talk about not being selfish you get reminders signed, sealed and delivered by your friends, your colleagues, your peers, and strangers telling you that you are just like them. Selfish. Because if everyone else is selfish like us we can rationalize it. It soothes the pain of our own embarrassing admission of being completely and utterly self-involved. We listen to a friend, a co-worker, a guest on Oprah talk about how they are trying to be more selfless and thoughtful and we roll our eyes and sigh. We call them self-righteous. Because we can't stand that "new age' bullshit. Don't start that "be a better person" tirade. Stay with me in this bottomless pit of self-involvement, seclusion and oddly enough exclusiveness. Because we actually believe (especially in NYC) that being selfish is important to survival. Because we believe in order to get anywhere in life everyone has to be (and I quote) "a little bit selfish." Maybe to a certain degree this is true. But, we metropolitan, cosmopolitan, 9-5ing, wine and dining, manhattanites have gone too far. We have cut out any middle ground between selfish and self-righteous. Because we need things to be cut and dry. Linear. Like the streets we tread on daily. A grid. Where each person can fit into their own categorized square box. And then proceed to not think outside of it.

As I continue on with my "tirade," even I can't help but think I am sounding self-righteous. But, if sounding self-righteous is the first step in realizing other people are around me, then I will risk it. If sounding self-righteous is the worst outcome of learning how to thrive in this world instead of just survive, then I will risk it. If my blessing from Sherman has me talking for days, weeks, months about the change it has stirred in me and that sounds self-righteous, so be it.

I want to surround myself around caring, nurturing, generous and selfless people. I want to stop letting all of my life's little issues bring me down. I want to stop using my issues and the state of down as an excuse for my attitude and behaviors. I want to stop expecting people to understand. I want to let go of my frustration when they can't. I want to stop making it about me. How do I do that?

I turn around and post on my blog. One of the most selfish things to exist. I fail miserably by writing in my blog, making it all about me, then posting it for the world (a dozen or so readers) to see.

Self-righteous is defined as piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic. And, pious is defined asprofessing or exhibiting a strict, traditional sense of virtue and morality; high-minded; commendable; worthy.
Those things don't sound so bad to me.

But, I have years of jaded, bitter, lonely, selfish learned behaviors to unteach myself.