It’s selfish when we make decisions without considering its impact on others. But this doesn’t mean we always defer to others and neglect our own interest. Wisdom and maturity calls for two-way considerations – taking into account our interest and that of others as well.
On the one hand, by definition, we’re acting selfishly when we make decisions only considering our interests – disregarding others, whether intentionally or not. To be fair, our selfishness tends to be more a point of immaturity rather than malice. That is, rarely are we intentionally disregarding others, we’ve just not learned to think of anyone other than ourselves yet.
All the same, learning to consider others doesn’t mean we then have to disregard ourselves. We’ve simply gone from one extreme to the next. And bitterness, resentment, and division tend to be the result either way.
For instance, others eventually get fed up with us and keep their distance when we cannot demonstrate that they matter in our decision making process. But we lose ourselves and feel controlled when others expect us to do for them without also considering our hearts.
To be sure, we must regard others to not be selfish. But regarding simply means we take them into consideration as we make our decisions. And, in the same way, we regard ourselves. There’s no wisdom in automatically deferring to ourselves, or to others. The better approach is to weigh the various considerations to make a more informed decision. And this might be altogether a novel approach – combining the best of each perspective rather than limiting ourselves to one or the other.
In the end, grow in maturity by considering the perspective of others. But don’t neglect your own along the way. Wisdom calls for us to embrace a two-way consideration in our decision making process.
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