I consider myself an intelligent person, with a certain amount of insight, but one issue that has had me stumped for a long time is: at what point does "self-actualization" become "selfishness"?
This post has been prompted by my feeling "chewed out" (in a very subtle way) by a friend because, in the wake of the tragedy in Orlando, I am still talking about, and asking for advice about, situations in my own life. Is that selfish? I don't see it as such. There isn't much I can do about what happened in Orlando other than try to get elected officials to pass gun control legislation which obviously they won't do. I rarely feel sad about anything that happens that far away. Is that a character flaw? And once a tragedy is of such mammoth proportions that it attracts celebrity fundraisers, I feel (incorrecly?) that any small amount of money I can afford to donate somewhere is better given to the church food pantry, where I know that every dollar will go to buy food.
And yes, life goes on. It wouldn't if my partner had a crisis (I would have to push the "stop" button), or even if there were a crisis in my building, or on the street outside my building, or at the church where I sing, or on a subway car where I was sitting, but I can't stop thinking and planning and asking questions about what's going on in my life because there was a mass tragedy somewhere.
The immediate trigger for this was my anger over some videos that I am sure someone (a woman who produced concerts that I sang in, and who now has gone "off" me for some inexplicable reason) deleted deliberately from her Youtube channel. It turns out there is nothing I can do about it because they are not my property (she paid a videographer to make them) and she said she did not delete them on purpose, but it's only her word against mine. I mean I'm sure they still exist somewhere, but knowing her, Hell will freeze over before she makes an effort to get them to me. What she did instead was tell me that next time I should save videos to my hard drive (which I will do, however complicated it seems to this senior citizen) and that has to be the end of it. In any event, before I had all the details, I asked this friend's opinion about how to handle the situation and her response was "I don't have any thoughts on this, sorry. All my thoughts are about Orlando." So is this a slap in the face or what? This is a very old friend, with whom I had an ugly quarrel about something very similar about a decade ago, and we have only slowly resumed a friendship since she now has email. The previous quarrel entailed my cursing at her (I think I said "F.U." , something I have probably said about four times in my life, the other being to my partner when I was furious) because when I told her how upset I was over my unrequited love/lust/limerence for The Mentor she told me I would feel better if I went and did volunteer work. I suppose this is a similar kind of thing. I am a lot more mature and less distraught now than I was then, so I have more resources at my disposal (writing in this blog, which there's a slim chance she may read).
In any event, I don't see why I should apologize for continuing to be concerned with my own life. I have a hard life (not as hard as the lives of people struck by tragedy, although usually in this kind of situation people rally round, which they don't if you're simply stuck in a dreary rut that you can't figure out a way out of), so maybe I don't have that much emotional energy to expend too far outside it. Right now my goals are to make my "third act" as rich and vibrant and spiritually rewarding as possible, while trying to make the end of an (often querulous and disagreeable) 82 year old's life as sweet as possible, all with extremely limited financial resources, no relatives, and almost no social support system. So I really don't feel the need to apologize.
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