Vachon Imagined

Selfishness gets a bad reputation.

I like being selfish.

Not because I want to take from others, but because I have come to learn that what is genuinely good for me is often good for others as well.

If I end a friendship, that ending may be as beneficial for them as it is for me. It can take wisdom, time, and distance to see that, but why would anyone want a person to remain in their life unwillingly? Isn’t that selfish too?

The pot calls the kettle black.

Eventually the kettle answers.

Eventually it answers all of us.

I left religion and many ordinary forms of organized life because they always seemed to point toward something outside of me. A future destination. A better version of myself. Some promised land perpetually one step beyond reach.

Being five feet tall and already having to climb onto the kitchen counters to retrieve the ibuprofen my husband insists on storing on the top shelf, I don’t need additional obstacles.

Seriously.

Someone listen to short people.

What I’ve learned is that selfishness is neither entirely good nor entirely bad.

It is a tool.

Like every tool, it can build or destroy.

Used wisely, it allows us to make decisions we’ve postponed for years because of who we think we should be. It helps us stop living according to expectations that no longer belong to us.

Humans, generally speaking, do not enjoy persecution.

Even masochists have safe words.

Stop.

No.

Enough.

Honeybun.

At some point every healthy life requires boundaries.

Yet many people spend their lives searching outside themselves for a devil to blame or a savior to rescue them. Both keep attention focused outward.

The devil made me do it.

Someone else will save me.

Someone else is the problem.

Someone else has the answer.

But this often becomes a distortion of perception.

The first recognition of life is often the clearest. A quiet knowing. An intuition. A truth that arrives before language can explain it.

Then, over time, we learn to look away.

Busyness teaches us.

Shame teaches us.

Fear teaches us.

Convenience teaches us.

Soon enough we stop looking at ourselves altogether and begin using other people as mirrors, judges, punching bags, heroes, villains, or excuses.

As though they aren’t already carrying enough.

But when you finally turn and look at yourself, and allow that self to look back, something changes.

It is not confirmation bias.

It is not narcissism.

It is not self-absorption.

It is honesty.

A window that begins to clean itself.

A lens slowly clearing.

A life becoming transparent to itself.

And through that clarity comes something greater than self-interest.

Something always present.

Always seeing.

Always providing.

Not outside of you.

Not separate from you.

But waiting patiently beneath all the noise for you to notice it.