By Brennus Braaten
I have learned a lot in the last couple of months about life and how I should live mine. Now I am not saying that I am any sort of genius when it comes to this, believe me, I understand that I have only lived a quarter of my life and still have a lot to learn. However I do believe that I have learned some very valuable lessons that I will hold on to for the rest of my life and I think that others would value from knowing these lessons as well. There is one lesson that I do hold above any others given my circumstances, and that lesson is that it’s OK to be selfish sometimes.
In society the idea of being selfish is seen as a negative thing. When we say someone is selfish we consider them to be rude, self centered, egotistical, just someone that you do not want to be around. Which is fair. A lot of the time people who are selfish tend to be selfish all of the time. They will only care about what helps them and won’t bother to look around them and help others. This is not a healthy level of selfishness, this is just abusing the idea of looking out for yourself.
When I was younger my parents taught me to always be grateful, kind, helpful to others and to just be an overall good person which I think I’ve done a pretty good job at. Although with this parenting, I never knew how to ask for things for myself. I just had what I had and never asked for more. When I was younger this just meant I never asked for food at a friend’s house or I would politely decline anything someone might offer to me. Now that I’m older it has started to affect me in a slightly negative way. This can affect my relationships, not being able to ask someone to put the same effort in as I am. I am now not a very confrontational person. I tend to avoid any sort of conflict because I’m a people pleaser and I only want people to be happy, I don’t want to hurt them. With me always wanting others to be happy I tend to push aside my own feelings a little too much. This is all to say that I’ve now learned that that isn’t the healthiest lifestyle.
These past few months have put me into situations where I have had to confront conflicts which would have been better handled if confronted earlier. I’ve also been put in situations where if I was more selfish and actually thought about my own feelings, the situation wouldn’t have even sprouted up in the first place. All of this is to say that being a selfish person is not always a negative thing. Being selfish can just mean that you care for yourself and you don’t just let yourself get pushed around. Being selfish can just mean that you’re putting yourself first because that is what you believe is best for you, and that is OK. This article might have turned into a “story time” type of deal, but I hope that me using my own experiences helped you to understand the point I was trying to get across.
Brennus Braaten is a Fillmore Central High School student, one of 10 area students participating in the Journal Writing Project, now in its 27th year.
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