Friday, February 26, 2010
Selfless Motives:
I like to believe that the majority of the time I am selfless when it comes to others. In the sense that I put their needs and feelings before mine. I love to help and be there for people especially my close friends. Although there has been a recent event that occurred to me where I was so frustrated and upset as a result of being selfish. It was one of my close friends birthday and we were planning a dinner for him to celebrate it. All my friends were planning to celebrate it together so we were trying to figure out a day were we could all make it. So the details were being set and somehow along the way I lost track of time. Eventually the time came to find out what was going on and one of my friends let me know that plans were already made and set. Once he told me the plans I was so upset, reason being they planned to do it on a night that I worked. Right away my thoughts and emotions started getting the best of me. I was so bummed and hurt, because they planned the day that I worked to celebrate my friends birthday with out me! I kept wondering why they chose a day that I worked to celebrate my friends birthday. I couldn’t come up with any good reason as to why things came out the way they did. I wanted to be there too! As the night went by I started wondering and thinking about how I was feeling and whether it was right for me to feel the way I did. I had this mental battle going on inside me where one part of me kept being selfish and wanted to stay angry at them for what “they did to me”. While another part of me started thinking about how it would be selfish to make them change the day to another day all because I couldn’t make it. After all I have such a big group of friends its hard to get us all together, and the event wasn’t about me it was about my friends birthday. Those thoughts confused me and began to make me more mad because I started to realize that I was being selfish. So I decided to share my frustrations with my sister. She told me that she could see where I was coming from but, that I should consider the fact that it would be selfish to change everyone’s plans just for me. So she suggested that instead of getting upset because I wasn’t able to make it why not just plan another dinner. Her advice helped me out so much. Instead of being so upset over not being able to make it why not celebrate my friends birthday twice. On a day that I could make it! In the end things worked out better then expected and he was happy to celebrate his birthday twice. From that I also realized that I wont always be able to make it to everything, and that I shouldn’t be upset. I also realized how to distinguish the difference between putting myself first and putting others first. In this case I can truly say that although it stared out with me being selfish, it ended up being a selfless motive.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that it is good that you realized that you were being selfish and that your friends birthday is about them and not about you. I would have been upset too especially was I was one of the people included in planning the event. On the other hand though, being selfless all the time is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes we need to be selfish and do things just for us. If we are always giving and doing for others then were is the time for ourselves? We also end up getting taken advantage of if we are too giving. I know because, like you, I tend to put others before myself, and in no way is it a bad thing, i am just saying be careful and heads up because being taken advantage of because of a giving nature really sucks.
ReplyDeleteI totally know what you are saying, I think it is so hard when you are the type of person that wants to fix everything for everyone but at the same time do the best thing for yourself. For myself I have always seemed to put my family’s needs before my own because I thought if they were happy I would be too. It is really great though that you were able to make not just your friend happy but also yourself, I think most of us forget that it is important to not just think or care about one or the other. I think it is hard to find a balance between the two because on the one hand you do not want people to see you as a push over who only takes care of everyone else but you also do not want to be that person that everyone knows they cannot count on because they only care about themselves. Your sister is really smart though it would not have occurred to me either to make a second dinner party but sometimes looking outside of the box can be the best thing because it is the only way that you can find a solution to benefit everyone.
ReplyDelete