The selfish self

Some philosophers have declared selfishness as a righteous virtue for a person to possess. They say that selfishness is compulsory for a man to survive in the society. Closely thought, it sounds almost true. Each one of us is selfish in some respect. At one point or the other, we keep our interest and happiness at the top and then weigh everything against it. It happens so naturally that we barely realize it. One such example of being selfish is “falling to your temptations”

We might not pay heed to our religious scriptures since we are now living in a modern society, but somehow lately, I have started seeing a lot of relevance in things which I have read somewhere in some religious text. The most striking example of them all is the shloka (verse) in Geeta where Lord Krishna exemplifies the human life as a chariot of horses with the horses signifying the senses. He tells Arjuna that the greatest virtue which a man needs to possess in order to actually have a life is to keep in control the horses of this chariot, which incidentally is the hardest thing to do. The person who has control over his senses has control over everything in his life.

I often find myself falling to my temptations. I just give up to my needs, which in the present context symbolizes both selfishness & lack of self control. Its not that I always regret doing that but the regret somehow surfaces at a later stage. These temptations come in various different forms, some of them so petty that you will hardly see them as one. But in the end I know that I just couldn’t resist the urge. This is actually the time to pull the reigns of the horses. To keep them from wandering away wherever they want to. But as most good things in life are, its really tough to do.

Sometimes these temptations take a monstrous form and threaten to ruin everything you have. You detest yourself for being so weak and for hurting many kind souls just because you were not strong enough. At that time you realize how out of control your own self has gone. You can do nothing but brood over it.

All this may sound a bit deviated from the point at which the post started, but observing closely, it is just another dimension to being selfish.