One of the most important things you must learn in life is the line between selfishness and self-sacrifice. You need to know this not only in what you are being asked but what you ask of others. This is the line to draw (argue with me if you wish): Whenever a person asks another to self-sacrifice themselves for their own happiness, it’s selfish. It is your fundamental right to refuse to sacrifice your own happiness for the happiness of another person. It is also your right to sacrifice it to someone you love if you have some bizarre fetish for it like some people do, but don’t do it lest you’d enjoy it, or you get some other benefit for it, giving you another form of happiness or comfort in return for what you lost.

It would be best for you if you didn’t put yourself into situations where you have to reject other people’s wishes regarding your person if you can avoid it. There are some situations where it’s unavoidable, like being a celebrity, but don’t guilt-friend people as one. Learn to be coolly friendly or super friendly with everybody, EVERYBODY, even the hot girls and guys, to even things so that people cannot make a justified call insisting you wanted to make friends with someone you didn’t.

The problem is that when you make friends with someone who you don’t TRULY love out of either guilt or convenience, that person may think far more of you than what you think of them. I think everyone has convenience friends, but it’s important not to pretend to them that they mean more to you than they do. This way, they won’t expect you to sacrifice yourself for them, and you won’t even get into this situation (so easily) as to what you have every right to say no to.

The expectation of sainthood.

There are some people that others have learned to treat as practical saints. Public personalities are often such; the Young Soul* assume their popularity comes from a loving and caring nature, or the opposite; for being cold, cruel, bossy, and selfish… Or both. They may assume that to get to a certain position in life (whether celebrity or just a popular individual), you must be cold and cruel, and opportunistic. Therefore, when you treat them kindly, against their expectation, their relationship to you instantly sifts; they think you love them because you’re nice to them and hate everybody else.

Some people expect public figures, politicians, and spiritual teachers or coaches to be love automats. The Young Soul* think that any notable person is a mommy or daddy for grownups. Therefore, if you’ve made your name as a spiritual teacher or similar, they may feel like you owe them things that you don’t; your money, support, your home – sometimes completely illogically.

Are you being selfish if you don’t give yourself to these people? Obviously not. They have some life and relationship skills to learn, and you can start by informing them what the situation you wind up in with them actually is.

Don’t worry; people with such a low understanding of social situations won’t get offended – people with no social graces won’t expect you to have any, either. (And when you do, they may interpret it as social anxiety, insecurity, love, or even desperation for acceptance and friendship.)

You have the right to be disliked.

Remember this in your life: you are not obligated to be pleasant to everybody. They, people in general, don’t need to like you or everything about you. They are entitled to their opinion and falsehoods about you, and you are entitled to defend your reputation against lies and defamation.

You have the right to stand up for yourself, say NO, you don’t have to serve women or children, and your life shouldn’t be less meaningful if you’re a man than that of a woman’s is. (It’s just that you’re more capable of certain things than women are, and don’t you forget, as a man, to point it out.) You have the right to an UNPOPULAR OPINION. You have the right to EXPRESS an unpopular opinion. You have the right to anger if people try to stop you from having an unpopular opinion.

You have the right to not be happy, or grateful; you have the right not to forgive, to feel ambitious, greedy, to focus on the superficial if you wish, and you have the right to be a menace.

But you don’t have the right to take from others what isn’t yours, push yourself into where you are not welcome, or demand love where you don’t inspire it.

You have the right to dislike people and deny yourself and your help from others (unless it’s an emergency).

You don’t need to be anybody’s friend or force yourself to see the good in people or to like everybody when it doesn’t bring you joy to be around those people. You ALWAYS have the right to deny yourself, your love, your presence, and your help from others unless it’s an actual life-and-death emergency. If someone’s immediate survival depends on you, then, of course, you help them – but after you get them to the care of appropriate authorities, you’re done as far as civilized societies go.

Whenever someone is after your love or friendship, realize this: They’ll cope without you. You’re not their only chance of happiness; in fact, you may be the very thing that keeps them from true love, as they’d be too focused on you to see their true love right behind your back.

Charity and request of love rather than money.

You might have noticed that when it comes to charity, people may actually be after love rather than money. Sometimes people pretend to be after love when they actually want money, but when it comes to charities, they may be asking for money but what they want is love – the unconditional variety.

You can feel that emotional pull when someone comes to you asking for money, which makes you feel a little dirty every time. Even if you want to support a certain cause, you feel icky because the people collecting for it are there to gain acceptance, love, and admiration for their work rather than actually supporting the cause they’re collecting for.

You may decide to make it into a principle to not give money (or help or your time) when you sense you are being emotionally blackmailed for love and care rather than money and practical support. In some cases, you may be able to ask: “Do you want my money even if I didn’t give a hoot about you personally or the cause you promote?” To break the emotional link to money.

Having a lot of money – and those who don’t.

If you were to make it big and start earning millions – do you owe that money to other people, particularly your estranged family members? Without going into a lot of detail, I say no. It may, however, sometimes clear some air, but negotiate this money so that you don’t get into a cycle of accidentally proving your love for family members you are trying to pay to keep their distance.

This is how it works: You tell your family members that you don’t want to give them money. They take it as a game: Of course, you want to give them money, they’re family, but you’re a bit miffed about something, so you’re going to make them beg. They beg, and you figure OK, they’re REALLY in a desperate situation, then, given how far they’re willing to go to get it, so you give them the money they ask. The money runs out, and they’re back for the next round, thinking you obviously don’t know that you can beg for their love with all that money that you gave them, so they’d better try it again if this new amount of money might make you trust they love you… And they want to know how far you’d go to get them out of trouble.

In a situation like this, negotiate: “How much money do you need to never speak to me or ill of me again? How much money do you think I owe you? How much do you think would be enough now, so you’ll NEVER have to come to me for money again?” Then, negotiate that number and make them sign a paper to say this is the sum they declared to be enough for life. Maybe set up a payment system that will stay in place for as long as they behave as per your dictation; do not speak ill of me to the press; do not speak to me apart under the following conditions…: Tell them no money is free, and if they want your money, they’ll do as told.

“Mariah paid for our silence!” they gripe in the press. Money stops coming. Mariah sends a press release: “Yes, I did, on a monthly retainer, and they’re still dumb enough to keep talking shit.”

You have the right to self-defense and your own turf.

In addition to physical self-defense, you have the right to emotional self-defense. This means you are entitled to be angry, yell, and express your frustration at others, but you do not have the right to force them to stay in your life while you’re doing that.

On your own turf, in your house, on your social media, on your website, you can express whatever feeling or opinion you want, and people on your turf can either accept your right to express it or get off your property.

However, you do not have the right to lock people on your property against their will. Whatever rules you put in place in your life, others must live by, but you have no right to stay in the life of someone who doesn’t want you in it.

You have the right to your autonomy, your personal space (whether online or offline) and to choose your own company as you see fit, based on any criteria at all – including skin colour, race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, color of their hair or the stupid name of their rock band.

You cannot use indiscrimination principles to get laid.

While discrimination against any group of people on the governmental level and societal level is and should be illegal, I do personally hold the unpopular opinion that people should be allowed to choose who they do business with as they want. Whether they only want women at their cafe, only men at their bar, whether they won’t serve blacks at their diner or ban white people from theirs, that should be up to them. After all, would you eat at a place that is owned by homophobes or racists? I’d like that freaking sign plainly at the door, so I can eat elsewhere despite being a straight white woman. (My skin crawls at the thought of having ever accidentally eaten at such an establishment. Those sandwiches must be toxic.)

However, no matter how much I support all-inclusiveness laws on a societal level, I don’t think public facilities should be in any way barring anybody based on any such label as we’re discussing here. Still, I do have to remind people that who you decide to have a PERSONAL relationship with is not subject to inclusion laws. As long as you don’t HARASS people, cause them damage or grief, you are ALWAYS allowed to deny yourself or your love from whoever based on whatever criteria that make sense to you. Not sleeping with a black woman or black man does not make you a racist, any more than preferring brunettes over blondes makes you… a blondist.

Also, it is perfectly understandable, and I say this as a non-native English speaker, to reject someone based on their low language skills. Communication is one of the biggest joys in an intimate relationship, and if you cannot do that on a deep level because you don’t have a strong mutual language to use, it is a perfectly valid reason to not pursue a relationship with someone.

Whomever you don’t like based on whatever reason you don’t like them has the right to be who they are, and receive the same rights as you do from their government and city, but private relationships, and in my view, private businesses should have the right to choose their own rules.

Selfishness and parents.

There was a time when I thought I owed something to my parents for having had the privilege to be given birth to. I don’t think I do anymore.

When I was in my 20s and thinking about whether I wanted kids or not, I realized something about parenting: When you bring a child into this world, you owe everything you’ve got to that child. All of you. Your kids should never feel like they owe you a thing, but you owe everything to your kids. They didn’t ask to be your kid; you made them, knowing YOU would have them. You brought them into your life, and as such, you owe them everything to make the best out of it for them… Not the other way around. You made a grown-up decision to have children, and even if you were a teenager when you made that decision, it was still you who made it.

However… There is a time when your children stop being children, and they deserve to have their life in their own hands, and you should have, as their parents, making them capable of leading their own life freely. You owe them a happy life at the expense of your own happiness at times. And that concludes the list of people who have the right to be more important than your happiness… Unless their behavior is so insufferable, they leave you no alternative but to disown them… But in that case, you owe them absolute freedom and a good nest egg if you’re able.

Your children don’t exist for your benefit.

Your child doesn’t live for you. Never have children expected them to be grateful for having been fed. Not killing them, keeping them clothed and on time at school, and not making them suffer is the LEAST you can do for your children when they are growing up. Don’t expect the treatment of the parent of the year if you only manage that… let alone if you manage less than that.

“Your kids will forget an empty stomach, but they won’t forget an empty heart,” I wrote around the same time about parenting and parental responsibility. A good parent fills up their child’s heart, in addition to their stomach. Don’t have kids if you think that’s too much to ask. And you definitely shouldn’t have kids to receive unconditional love – that’ll end around the time they turn 6.

You can’t also be so desperate for your kids to like you that you cannot establish boundaries and teach them the fundamentals of life; like you can’t always get what you want… For free.

You may be their soul challenge… And they yours.

Speaking of getting things for free, remember this, too: People love a challenge. You may be the worst parent for your child, thinking that you are giving them everything a child could ever want only to be met with ungratefulness and pining after something you cannot provide for them as much as you’d love to or wanted to. They might have been born into your family for the challenge of it; whatever you have is nothing they want, even if you fought to get it – and they’ll have to fight their way through life to get what you had as a teen… (Some of us are masochists.)

Rest assured, however, no matter how it goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… In fact, whatever kills you, too, makes you stronger. Reincarnation is a wonderful, wonderful thing that both make all of our mistakes a life lesson and gives us as many chances to get it right as we need to. It makes pointless suffering have a point, and any drama and turmoil a form of entertainment – for yourself and your kids. You may be a disaster zone, but heck… You’ll all learn something for the next round. (Never make decisions as if this was your or your kids’ last life again… And you won’t always be their parent, so don’t assume they’re willing to change for you – you’re potentially just a one-life shit show for them.)

“Wait until you’re old and alone…”

Now, as you get old… Whether your children will be there or not is a question of how selfish you were as a parent and how selfish your children are as adults. Be it as it may, you chose to have them, you raised them the way you did, and now you’re living the consequences.

As parents, especially as the mother, the one decision you must accept the responsibility for at all times: You decided to have them. No matter how they got started, you decided to have them, and then you decided to keep them and to raise them yourself. However, what ended up for you as a result of that decision, and there is NO WAY around it.

 

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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.

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