shlomo613

Doesn't self centered mean someone who is centered around himself?... ie, selfish?



No she doesn't, but I'm just a good actor. I've been acting for about 30 years now.

btw, I'm getting a little worried that I'm going to owe therapy fees to serenity, yiraishamaim, InspireYidden, TalmidChaim, ysftw, TheBigX90, and shlomo613. Thanks everybody for helping me sort myself out. (Gosh! I've never liked sorting my things out. Maybe that can explain a thing or two.)

Hey, around here we all owe each other an eternity's amount.

G-d is our Tatte, he's got the big bucks, I have a feeling it will be his pleasure to pick up the bills.

stillgoing wrote:


I think it might have to do with the fact that since he is selfless and gives so much of himself away, one might have a need to run away to a corner of his life where no one else exists except for himself, so that he can escape from his public self and be alone.
It could be that the porn is less of a selfish experience and more of an escape mechanism.
A good way to know would be, if one has other healthy means of escape or is the porn his first choice of drugs when the going gets tough?
It is hard to give and give without having some personal source of energy.Like a well that can run out of water as opposed to a spring which has its own source of water and can overflow to others

[quote="unanumun" post=253935]stillgoing wrote:

Umanuman, Wow! Such a clever insight. I think StillGoing has much food for thought on this point - and probably many of us here too.

LOL

Yes, I do. I think unanumun may have hit the nail on the head (ouch! ) Thanks. I need to digest this.

stillgoing wrote:


Perhaps he is helpin' out in order to get credit.

The question is not necessarily a difficult one, for perhaps that person has bouts of both.

You know, I've been thinking (I try to do that at least once a year or so, "one thought at a time), we always talk about one day at a time, or 90 days made up of single days, and I realized that if you are 20 years old you only have 36,500 days until 120. And if we figure the average lifetime today to be 80 years that's only 21,900 days until we die, and if we're older then 20, say 40, it's 14,600 days! I'm not trying to depress anyone, but we've all been on this world so long, and have been feeding our addiction for so long, that sometimes, if we get a shock of reality it helps to put our minds into perspective and out of "her"inspective.

btw, if a day seems like a long time to keep clean, try seconds. 14,600 days is only a little over 21 million seconds. (Sound like a lot, but seconds go by awfully fast).

May we all be second to none!

You've just given us new meaning to the mishna "shuv yom echad lifnei misascha" - relax about sobriety there might be no tomorrow!

Once a year max.

By the way have you calculated how many million of those seconds are sleeping, eating, praying and shaking lulav etc,?
Get yourself out a big envelope and a pen with plenty of ink and let us know how many million net seconds per year we've got to worry about.

Wow, what a great thread. I'm sorry I've been out of the discussion, and I'll try not to push things too far off topic.

I agree with everything that's been said, especially when it comes to the relationship between "selfishness" and addiction.

I've found with my own recovery process that meditating on my mental constitution, well, constitutes self-indulgence too. There's a point at which pondering one's level of selflessness or selfishness takes away that person's very ability to pursue acts of Chesed. In other words, if you're up in your own head about whether you're acting out of self-interest or genuine concern for others, you're probably missing some prime opportunities to really help others. Again, this is something I've realized about myself.

My motto (which is definitely not always followed) when it comes to this is, "Just Do It!" (trademarked). We all know when we don't want to do something, and if you're really taking on a character make-over, that's exactly the time when you should do something. When your wife asks you to do so-and-so, and you don't feel like it, try doing it. Worse case scenario: you're a selfish person who lives selflessly!

So, are you basically saying that this will just take up time that we could be using to help others? What about just spacing out?
Or maybe I'm getting you wrong.

I'm probably not making sense, and also undermining the bent of the thread in the process. Sorry.

I think the act of intellectualizing something, anything, creates the possibility of making it just academic, and less real. Our brains are our most precious organ, and should be used, used, used, so I don't agree that thinking about something is detrimental. However, if your time is spent only thinking about something, and never acting, then a crucial balance has shifted in one direction and you're probably missing some opportunities for acting.

Also, some questions require soul-searching, thought experiments, mental modeling...just spending time in your own head pondering. And some questions require real-life, hard data. I think your question is (mostly) the latter. "Am I selfish?" Well, is your time spent doing things for others? Yes, there's the deeper question of whether you're wired one way or the other, etc., etc. And I don't mean to dismiss that as trivial. But that's a huge question, one, potentially, with a huge, complicated answer, or...no possible solution. Maybe we're all selfish, and selflessness is just roundabout selfishness.

The potential for pilpul on this is endless, and maybe even a diversion from the most simple solution: just forcing yourself to do things for others.

I would simultaneously think about this question while pursuing tangible acts of Chesed (a variation of random acts of kindness, maybe). Make sure that while you're looking for an answer, you're also living more selflessly. That could only be a good thing.

By the way, you're a tzadik for even asking this question in the first place. In my opinion, anyone even remotely interested in knowing whether they are selfish is, by definition, not selfish. Selfish people usually don't even bother asking that question.