On Living Selfishly: new link, new thoughts

A couple years ago, I posted the link to my TED-X Youth talk “On Living Selfishly” via a Vimeo site with all six talks that day in 2022 at Choate Rosemary Hall School.  I have learned that my talk is on YouTube at the TED Talks channel:

https://youtu.be/6sUNwHXvWSU?si=BUdZ5XM1kZydc7GE 

I seem to be alone - to some, even goofy - in regarding myself as completely selfish. But it seem so obvious to me that one’s values and actions, and one’s responsibility for one’s choices, are what matter! It seems obvious, too, that self-righteousness - particularly, “I’m not selfish” - is toxic to individual happiness, community spirit, and international understanding! So I thank all who see fit to share the link to my TED-X talk.

This past week I gave an updated version of On Living Selfishly at a local service club.  I added this toward the end, after the Dr. Albert Schweitzer's great quotation: 

This is my perspective on a human condition.  However, for those who are, like me, spiritually inclined, there is a clearly holy dimension: the Creator of each of us and all of us - call it God, or Allah, or Brahman, or just Life with a capital L - gives each human being autonomy. 

Entrusted with that autonomy, though we may hope for divine inspiration, are our values, our priorities, and our actions not matters of our choice?

 

Let me share with you a story.  I think it is a Sufi story I first heard from my late mother.

 

"Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten.  And, seeing them, the seeker cried, 'Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?'

 

"To which God replied, 'I did do something. I made you.'"

 

How to discern one's values

There is a perfect, infallible way to discern your values and to examine them: whatever you are doing from moment to moment is the expression, the manifestation, of your conscious and unconscious values.

If that seems wrong to you, think about what part of that logic is wrong, and why. 

#confessionofaselfishman

A voice from within you?

This the Holy Spirit speaking. Call me whatever you wish: your connection to the divine; your conscience; your personal truth; your better judgment. I am no more, but no less, than the Holy Spirit within you. I am here. I am always here. And I am here for you. I care about your health and well-being. I love you and I always will. I am eager to guide you to peace of mind, healthful choices, loving and joyful relationships, and wholesome success.

If it seems otherwise, it may be that you are not listening.

It may be that other things are more important to you than paying attention to the goodness, even the holiness, within you.

It may be that it is more important to you to be right, to defend your ego, than to accept others, and yourself, without judgment.

It may simply be that it has been so long since you talked with me that you have forgotten that I am right here within you.

Now you know. Again.

- God, attrib.

April 25, 2026

Billions of people of faith around the world are, like us, doing the best they can see to do to care for their communities; to keep their loved ones and neighbors healthy, safe, at peace.

There are many different faiths - and many people who believe that there is no God or Creative Power, however named, other than the laws of nature.  And it is natural for people to want to be right about, and defend, their beliefs and those who share their beliefs. This tendency has for millennia, and still today, created countless us-versus-them conflicts, from the small and personal to the global and catastrophic.

Imagine if billions of people each lived by two fundamental human commandments or principles - thus setting an example for others: love YOUR God or Creative Power, as you believe or have experienced It to exist, and love others, whatever their beliefs, as you love yourself.

Tears, and things deep and true.

This morning I finish​ed The Four Winds, a novel by Kristin Hannah​.  The end was both sad and inspiring: I was moved to tears. When that happens, I often remember my late mother saying something like, "When tears come, you know you have found something deep and true."

To many people, crying - especially when a man cries - is a sign of weakness. Surely, it is a sign of vulnerability - but that is not a bad thing!  It is sad that many people seem unwilling to act on, or even fully experience, what is deep and true for them.  There is a lot of ​"keeping it together,​" for our self-image and others' image of us.  At what cost? Vitality? Joy? Connection?

I would rather be deeply and openly moved and inspired by stories of courage, strength, grace, perseverance, and love than be stoic at the cost of experiencing the emotions that flow from those experiences. 

I find a kind of freedom and joy in being reminded that, if we look for them, there are as many occasions for deep and true emotions as we can bear - each moment of Life, wretched and horrifying or glorious and inspiring, being uniquely amazing.

Examining reactions to unfulfilled expectations

Though shared values and beliefs in what is right and what is wrong are essential to peaceful and just societies and cultures, the perception of right and wrong varies from person to person.

How we react when our expectations are not met - in matters large and small, personal, social and political - is important to the quality of our daily lives and our relationships. Usually, there is a major subconscious aspect to our reactions to life's events, including to unfulfilled expectations. And often - because it is human to want to be right - we accept our reactions as right: we don't examine them.

Yet we decide, consciously or not, whether to accept unfulfilled expectations and find and focus on other things that brings us gratitude and joy, OR to judge ourselves wronged by disappointment - somehow victimized by Life or by another person.  

The habit of reacting to - of judging - unfulfilled expectations as wrong makes it hard for us to be happy and to maintain our relationships. In particular, the more entitled we feel to have our expectations of another person met by them - especially if we disregard how we may be failing to meet their expectations of us! - the greater the frustration and misery for both. And "minor" issues often become major ones.

So, dear readers, I invite you to join me in striving to cultivate the habit of examining our reactions to  life as it unfolds, and retaining only the helpful ones - ideally, the loving ones - as an important part of self-knowledge and being a good, peaceful and happy person, partner, friend and citizen.

Where will presidential excesses stop?

Two questions inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 query, “I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?”

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President of the United States, acting outside “his exclusive constitutional authority” (Trump v. United States, slip op. at 21), starts and escalates a war without a Declaration of War by Congress (Const. Art. I, sec. 8), where will it stop?

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President makes threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and the Secretary of War threatens to show “no quarter, no mercy” and not to follow “stupid rules of engagement”, which threats are “plainly illegal”; see When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality: The Slippery Slope to Total War on Iran, M. Donovan and R. VanLandingham, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.); where will it stop?

 

Published on Substack as "Where will it stop?"