Selfishness is viewed in a negative light by most people. Selfishness is usually equated with stinginess, unconcern for others, ruthlessness, and egotism. However, in order to know whether selfishness is really bad we need to define it. According to the World English Dictionary, selfishness is the state of being chiefly concerned with one’s own interest or advantage. Can you honestly say that you are not chiefly concerned with your own interest or advantage? Well, if you say you are then that means you are selfish. Doesn’t sound so bad and evil anymore, does it?

Really, every single person is inherently selfish. This is part of what it means to be human. We are conscious beings and therefore have the ability to make our lives better by innovation and skill. We aren’t just hardwired to live and behave in a certain way (at least I hope you aren’t). This is in large part what distinguishes us from animals.

Why do we associate all these bad qualities then with being selfish? It is because we are only looking at the bad kind of selfishness to draw our perceptions of it. The question is not should we be selfish or not, but rather how should we be selfish? Should we selfishly gorge on junk food because it fulfills a momentary urge or selfishly go for healthy snacks instead that will guarantee us better health and more longevity? Should we selfishly bully other people to make us feel superior, or selfishly give respect to others to forge quality relationships and connections that will bring great opportunities for financial success and emotional well-being? Should we selfishly spend our time watching movies and reading novels, or selfishly spend our time improving our skills and exercising our body so we feel good about ourselves and have more opportunities of advancement in the world?

I am selfish. You are selfish. However, you do have a choice to make. What kind of selfishness will you practice? The kind that will bring you ongoing joy, health, and security, or the kind that will bring you disease, no friendships, and self-loathing? Choose wisely.

I want to make what may seem an audacious claim. Every person that is living today, has lived in the past, or will live in the future is living for the same purpose. Whoa…wait a minute! You mean to tell me that Atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Deists, Hindus, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and who knows what else are ALL living for the same basic reason? Yep. Actually, this is fairly easy to prove if you just think about it for a minute. What is the Atheist living for? Personal fulfillment. Since they believe there is no afterlife, they do all they can to experience and achieve what they think will bring them the most personal fulfillment in this life. They may do things that seem to be selfless or humanitarian at times, but even these actions if taken to the root motivation will seen to be done out of a desire to experience personal fulfillment. Take giving money to someone in need. That is looking for the fulfillment of others and not yourself, right? Wrong! The reason anyone would give to someone is because that fulfills them, either by making them feel good about performing a perceived or manufactured duty, or avoiding the societal guilt that they might feel if they didn’t help someone in need. The same is true for Christians. Why do Christians believe in a higher power, and why do they believe in the resurrection of Yeshua the Christ, and why do they (or at least some) seek to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling”? Is it just because they happen to for no reason love the Almighty? No, it is because they want a personally fulfilling eternity. They too are living for personal fulfillment, though in their case it extends beyond this life.

Really, everything everyone does is at its root done for personal fulfillment. One may have to dig through a pile of secondary and tertiary reasons, but that is always the root. And we would think very strangely of a person that was not living for their own personal fulfillment. We would probably think they were mentally retarded. After all, who is going to do things they feel will never (either in this life or after this life) give them personal fulfillment in any way? I don’t even know if that is possible. So, the next time you are talking to someone with a different worldview or outlook than your own, realize that both of you are actually seeking and living for the same thing; you are just using different routes to get there.