Embrace Simplicity

Once I remembered a man telling me, “Every man must decide weather he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” As I heard these words in my mind I started to think, which would, I choose. The right one would be to go through the light of creative altruism, being unselfish and thinking of others. But I ask you, is it really that simple? I could say that my goal in life is not to be selfish, to think of others before myself but, when the time comes to put this decision at use, we realize it’s hard and most of us switch from one light to the other.

There are two types of selfish people. The ones that were raised selfish, the ones that won’t even lend you a pair of shoes. And the other, is inside all of us. The difference between these two depends on the situation, the selfish person will always be like that never generous, always think of himself, when the other one will be selfish when it is someone that is having a problem. Suppose your friends’ dog has dies, you feel sad for them maybe, but you probably say, that’s life and we have to move on. Now be really honest with me, would you react the same way if it was your dog the one that had died? No, of course you wouldn’t, what you would really be thinking is poor me, I am all alone without my dog, poor me. This is when that selfish person that is inside all of us comes out. It can come out, it is naturally for us to feel sad about something that has happened “But we should have remembered how we feel when we hear of the same thing about others.”(Section 26) Epictetus and I feel the same about this. There is nothing wrong in feeling sorry or sad for yourself, as long as when something terrible happens to someone else you remember how you felt when that happened to you instead of pretending you care and actually help that person. We may think that since everyone is like that they won’t mind if you’re attitude is apathetic, but they will and think that you simply don’t care about them.

The right thing is not the easiest thing to do, even so it should be the path we take in order to live a fine life. With simply caring more about people’s problems we come closer to that path we have been destined to follow since the very beginning of life. When being selfish, we are not living as we wish to live: we are asking others to live how we wish to live. We shouldn't punish others for our own choices, but just remember how we feel about them.