RECLAIMING SELFISHNESS
Several weeks ago…
…I listened to an episode of Hidden Brain: “How to Say No,” featuring Vanessa Patrick, Ph.D. She told a story that was jarring in both its ridiculousness and its familiarity: early in her career, she missed her own birthday party because her boss asked her to stay late to wait for a fax. Her boss went home at 5; the fax came close to 9pm; her friends and family were long gone by the time she got home (save for her sweet grandmother).
Patrick’s story recalled others from my own circle:
One deeply intelligent, hardworking woman told me the tearful story of being over an hour late for her own anniversary dinner because her manager “needed her thought partnership” after hours. No actionable ideas came out of her late meeting with her boss. Her husband was hurt for weeks.
Another very talented woman I know well described to me that her work had snowballed so far beyond her original job description that she found she was being paid only 60% of what her work was worth by fair market value. When she told her leaders this, they responded by saying she should be grateful for all the extra experience she gained. “I guess they’re right,” she thought. She let it fly, working 60-hour weeks until the company restructured and she found herself out of work entirely.
I, having just started a job I’d desperately wanted, legally changed my own name to match a plane reservation made on my behalf. I did this to avoid putting the company through the pain of changing said reservation. (Yes, this is true. And yes, I own this decision entirely. I’ve grown a lot since then. And also, why is it so damned hard to change a plane ticket?)
These stories made me think of the word selfless, and how it’s come to be accepted as a virtue: concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one's own; unselfish. It’s become synonymous with altruism, defined as an unselfish devotion to the needs and desires of others for a perceived greater good. There’s a definition of altruism in biology, though, that speaks more clearly to what happened to the women above and me: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species. (Emphasis mine.)
“Altruism: n. (in biology) behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species.”
I have seen many people I care about get caught in the riptides of selflessness and altruism at work, just like the women I described above. We say “yes” to things outside our job descriptions and beyond our capacities; we willingly catch “snowballs” (those requests that seem small at first but end up accumulating hours—even days—of time and effort, to the detriment of the more important but less urgent work on our plates).
We do these things because saying “yes” gets us called “gritty.”
We do these things for no additional pay because to ask for it would be considered “entitled”.
We do these things and do not say “actually, no—that is not in my wheelhouse” or “no, my time is better spent on the things in my job description” because that would get us labeled “not a team player”, “not coachable”, “unwilling to grow” or, at the worst, “selfish.”
We do these things out of fear that we’ll fall out of favor, or that we’ll fall out of a job. So, to avoid being seen as “selfish,” we approach the more literal definition of “selfless”: without self.
“Selfless: adj. Without self.”
When we say “yes” to these things we say “no” to ourselves. And in doing that, we distance ourselves from what makes us ourselves: our people, our most fulfilling work, activities that keep our minds and bodies healthy, opportunities to make good money doing what we’re best at and spend it on a fulfilling life. And if we do this long enough, we lose ourselves—and that loss is painful and terrifying, as Joan Didion writes in her masterful 1961 essay Self-Respect: Its Source, Its Power:
“It is the phenomenon sometimes called alienation from self. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the spectre of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that one's sanity becomes an object of speculation among one's acquaintances. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
Give us back to ourselves! Joan! My goodness!!
This gave me an idea, and as one does in 2024, I ran to ChatGPT and asked it to define “selfish.”
Selfish: adjective. being concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself, often at the expense of others.
OK, that sounds bad. But what does it really mean? I thought. Like, etymologically? I asked the chat, and it told me:
Self: noun. One’s own person.
Ish: suffix, makes something a descriptor. Belonging to, having the nature of.
Selfish: adjective. Containing the qualities of the self, characterized by self.
Belonging to oneself.
“Selfish: Adj. Containing the qualities of the self, characterized by self.
Belonging to oneself.”
If the first part of this post feels like a mirror to you, it's time to reclaim selfishness. Selfish is caring for oneself enough to get to know that self’s strengths, weaknesses, values, and desires for the future. Selfish is understanding what decisions get you closer to and farther away from those desires. Selfish is doing the math: is this brainstorming session worth hurting the most important person in my life? Is the “extra experience” worth 60-hour work weeks while I’m getting paid for 40? Is not causing trouble worth literally changing my own name?
Selfish is clarifying your vision and what you value, protecting your resources with a firm and steadfast love, and articulating these things in all of your yeses and all of your nos. No one is going to do this for you, least of all those who benefit from your selflessness. The great and terrifying thing is that the work is yours to do; the sweet and encouraging thing is that you aren’t alone in that work.
My sincere hope in starting Marble is to build a beautiful community of selves who are steadfast in their own visions and who champion those of others. True selfishness isn’t blinded by self—it sees and loves the billions of other selves out there, and wants to live in a world where those selves feel clarity, purpose, and wholeness too. Selfishly, I think that world sounds wonderful.
