Life shouldn’t be about you alone. As a matter of fact, life looks so boring, dispiriting and uninteresting if it’s about you and your ego. And just like an African proverb once reminded us: to go fast, go alone but to go fast, go together.
In the above advice, there are fundamental issues to be clarified. One is the kind of people to go on a journey with while the other has to do with the journey itself. Like, why should I go with others when I can go alone?
Well, there is nothing special about going on an adventure together with a bunch of friends. Because on an individual level, there are stuffs you can and have to figure out alone and yourself. Similarly, there are also stuffs you can’t figure out alone – you will just need others.
Just like there are journey you can go alone, there also so trip you will always need others. Or you risk been stuck and your dream being ripped off.
At what point should life be about others and not you? Probably as long as you know life is better having others and love ones by our side -- the stuff of compassion and empathy.
One small boy was asked what he want to become in life. “a kind man” he replied confidently. Of all the careers and courses in the world, the only trajectory this little lad want to embark on is one on: kindness. What a sweet boy!
It will take a paradigm shift from your old mentality of scarcity to that of prosperity and abundance -- to think of to others and not yourself. People who think too much about themselves often operate from the shitty values of scarcity and want.
And that’s where Adam Grant’s conceptualization of giving, taking and matching fit this piece. The givers see the world from the abundance lens.
Takers see it from scarcity binocular while matchers think of every relationship as a transaction.
In a way, givers are divided into two: Otherish and selfless. If you give and take care of yourself, you are an Otherish giver but if you give to the point of exhaustion, burnout and depression, you are a selfless giver.
Otherish givers know the limit, the boundary and the territory of their actions. Selfless givers can’t demarcate nor figure out when their actions harm their well-being. It important to know the difference between the two.
Being kind or generous is about the best that can happen to anyone. But these two virtues can be taken advantage of.
There are exploiters of goodwill, extortionist and crazy makers who just want to milk the nice guys dry. It’s important you learn to spot these elements and shut your door before they reach and drain your riches.
Life is sweet when you think of others. Because one among them will think about you, too.
Life is the embodiment of selfishness! Life is selfish because it is for itself in two ways: it is for its own survival, and it is for its own reproduction. This desire is embodied in an adaptive autocatalytic chemical system, forming life’s embodied mind.
Anything that is not itself is the other; and the collection of others constitute its environment. The organism must destructively use the other to satisfy its reproductive desire, but on achieving this, it produces an additional other option but now one that also embodies its own selfish aim and the means to satisfy this aim.
Life cannot be planned: there’s fate, and there’s simple bad luck. Failure can bring crushing disappointment, or you can try and make a new plan. A person can waste an inordinate amount of time mourning what they don’t have, or plans that don’t work out. But who wants to waste that much time regretting?
Life has happy surprises, small moments to cherish. It’s a matter of weighing the good and bad times – the challenge is to balance both, ending up with a life looked back on that was worth the mighty effort
