The Pain of Selfishness of The Closest Ones

Selfishness is what motivates people most to do what they want to do. It is like an infection that everyone has caught at some point in their life. To say that one has never acted based on selfish desires is a blatant lie. Selfish people only chase what will bring them happiness. They don't feel obligated to help others ( especially strangers), they don't see a different point of view on things, and they lack the ability to solve problems within their relationships. Ultimately, one's selfishness will lead them to a lonely life in which people will become as distant as possible. If everyone in the world is insensitive to others, as well as selfish we will lose our sense of humanity and happiness.

When someone is being selfish the wellbeing of others is overlooked in these situations. In the essay “ A Non-Smoker with a Smoker” Helen is a habitual smoker who upsets her boyfriend, Helen evidently will not quit smoking just because her boyfriend is not comfortable with it. Helen’s boyfriend’s opinion is clearly ineffective to Helen. This shows that Helen is being selfish by not caring what her boyfriend thinks about her smoking. “ A part of me wished Helen would stop smoking”. Selfish partners treat their partners as objects, rather than as people. Any conversations directly about the situation are refuted, shot down or let go because the selfish partner will retaliate in a passive-aggressive way.

This was shown in paragraph nine and ten when Helen made an excuse for not quitting smoking by saying “ Do you want me to go around for months mean and cranky outside and angry inside” which made her boyfriend leave the topic of conversation, leaving the suffering partner unhappy, lonely, and misunderstood. Helen's boyfriend gets jealous of the cigarettes because they get way more attention then he does from his girlfriend. In paragraph eleven Halens boyfriend says “ I also find myself becoming jealous of her cigarettes, so If I see Helen reaching for a pack I kiss her first” Helen's boyfriend is being affected by her smoking and she can't see that. The selfish partner often denies the feelings of their partner and has trouble believing that their needs and wants may not be the same as their partner. They have trouble seeing that there is a problem, or that they could be the root of it.

Selfish people don't feel obligated to help others in any shape or form. In the essay “ Why I want a Wife” the wife wants someone who does all the activities that a wife is expected to do in a marriage. A wife’s expected duties include “ taking care of the children when she's gone, to keep track of the children's doctor and dentist appointments and hers too and make sure her children eat properly and are kept clean”. This shows that a selfish person does not feel obligated to help others even if it is her own children because she only cares about herself, and her happiness comes over anyone else. The author never uses pronouns to describe the perfect “wife” because she doesn't care if it is a male or female as long as she gets what she wants. Which is to have someone do duties around the house for her. She wants a wife to use her for her own happiness, she is not looking for a partner to grow old with, she just needs an object to do duties which she was expected to do herself. In the whole essay, the audience is being described as a perfect wife who everyone would want.

As stated before selfish people lack the ability to understand things through other perspectives. They don't prefer to even if they can because they don't care about others. In the documentary Bowling for Columbine school shooters did what they did for their own reasons, they didn't care about the people they are going to kill. This goes back to my thesis about how selfish people cant see things from a different point of view. In the documentary, there was a bank that sold guns. They sold guns knowing that the community was pro-guns and they took advantage of it and sold guns just to make extra money on the side. They didn't care about the people who lost their loved ones in the shooting at the school. K-mart sold the same bullets that were shot in the school shooting, they just wanted to make more money. K-mart and the bank failed to look at the situation through the mourning families, and how they felt about them selling guns.

In conclusion, selfishness is a disease that makes people who they are not and makes them believe what they want to. It causes a ripple effect of bad things. Selfish people don't care about others, they don't understand other people's perspectives and lack the ability to solve problems in their relationships. It leads them to dark, lonely and sad life. Which eventually will lead us to lose our sense of humanity and happiness.