Do you get sick of yourself?

I often wish I had none. What a bother, this self! With its pride, vanity, whining, hostilities, likes and dislikes, discontents. Always something wrong, nothing perfect. I’d be happy if –

And such a bore! Can’t get comfortable, find the right book. Fretful. Vulnerable. And a crybaby! Too hot, too cold, too old…

Selves are luxury goods. Those busy with survival can’t afford them. You do what you must and that’s that. Groaning wastes precious zest.

Many the guru who preaches self-solicitude as a path to self-fulfillment. Good luck with that! A self will never be fulfilled because its focus is what it lacks. That gnawing emptiness keeps us seeking. I write to square myself with my futility, to “make something of myself,” knowing nothing’s to be made. Dog-pal Henry rolls his eyes at my absurdity. “Relax, bub, you’re pointless. Get over it.”

I’m happiest when I’m too busy to wonder if I’m happy. Now, for example, playing with words. My task teases, taunts – where is my musing mousing to? Writing about myself I cease being a self and become my topic, with which I entertain. Am I pleasing you or driving you away?

Humans, best I know, are the only creatures with selves. Other creatures take existence as it comes. They’ve got patterns and imperatives but no opinions. Opinions are based on comparisons, which arise from language, better and worse. Henry is happy where he is or, if not, he does something about it, or if nothing feels good, he resigns himself and doesn’t mope. This too shall pass, grin and bear it.

Politics divides between the selfless and selfish – We vs. Me. This is an attitudinal difference, not a policy dispute. There can be whining Democrats and generous Republicans, at least there were, back in the day. The party of the Nameless One seems all about Me: poor me, gimme, I want more, to hell with them!

But isn’t self the human advantage, what made us the rock star of the species? We create to individuate, don’t we? Henry doesn’t mind being just another dog, I’d howl to be just another human, interchangeable as a Lego block, no big deal.

True, selves stimulate exertion beyond the modicum required for survival. I might be sleeping now, catching a few extra winks but for my self assembling these paragraphs for your approval. Wouldn’t life be a bore without a self?

An hypothetical, of course. Selves are as essential to humans as trunks to elephants, unimaginable without them. Creativity’s fired by desire to be admired. We no longer compose AMGD – Ad maiorem Dei gloriam – “to the greater glory of God” – if we ever did. And you can’t have a self that’s selfless, by definition.

So however sick of myself, I’m as stuck with me as with my shadow. The purpose of morality is to train ourselves in the direction of selflessness, to remind ourselves of our individual unimportance and our duty to our kind; to be humble, gentle, generous, dedicated to the wellbeing of all and not our own advantage; to rejoice in what we have, not resent what we haven’t. These are easy lessons to recite and hard to heed. That is why morality is a discipline to be practiced incessantly, like daily exercise, not a text to be read and set aside. That is why we pray the same words over and over for, alas, they never get old.

Writing is my form of prayer. But now, having written, I check my stats, to see how I’m doing in the human scrum.