Selflessness is selfishness in disguise.

Is Selflessness the opposite of Selfishness?

What do you understand by the term Selflessness? According to Google, it means "concern more with the needs and wishes of others than with one's own." Giving someone or his/her needs and wishes more value than your own. Ignoring your needs, your wishes and just thinking about fulfilling the needs and wishes of someone else, whether it be your parents, friends, partner, or anyone. This sounds so kind and truly selfless, doesn't it? But is it so?

Aren't you being selfish in doing someone's help? See, when you fulfill someone's wishes, whether due to some reason or without any reason, just out of pure kindness, you are gaining something in both cases. If you are doing it cause of a reason, then somewhere you are obviously gaining something from it. Maybe they helped you once, maybe you know that someday you might need them too, or maybe saying no would've made you feel guilty. Whatever the reason might be, there is still a reason. And if there is a reason behind it, can the act really be called completely selfless?

When you help someone, you both sometimes make an unsaid pact. The pact states that the person you've helped will help you when you will need it or ask for it. Nobody says it out loud, but somewhere, isn't that expectation still there? Imagine helping the same person again and again and then one day when you need them, they refuse to help you. Wouldn't you think, "I was there for you every time you needed me." But if your help was completely selfless, why should their refusal to help you hurt you? You weren't supposed to expect anything in return. Yet somewhere, maybe without even realizing it, you did.

And when you help a person just out of pure kindness, you gain something too. A feeling. A feeling of "feel-good". The one that makes you happy when you think that today I did a good deed by helping someone without any reason. Maybe you don't literally think, "I am such a good person", but you feel it. You feel good. And in helping someone, you also gained something. This feeling of "feel-good", which made you happy or maybe just made you feel like you did something right today.

Let's look at an example here. You help your friends. That's what our society teaches us. "A friend in need is a friend indeed". But when you helped him, you both know that he will also help you when you will be in need. So you gained someone to rely on in your hard times. And again, is that wrong? No. But is it completely selfless? I don't know.

You help poor people. This is also something our society teaches us. "Help the ones who can't help themselves". You give someone food, donate clothes or give money to someone who probably can't give you anything back. There is no unsaid pact here, no future favour, and you might never see them again. But when you help them, don't you gain a feeling of "Feel good", that yes, I did something good today? What if you don't tell anyone about it? Does that make it completely selfless? Maybe. But even then, you know. And sometimes knowing is enough. You get to live with the image of yourself as someone who helped another person.

But let's take something which seems much more difficult to call selfish. What about parents? A mother sacrifices years of her life for her child. She loses sleep, spends money, puts her own wishes aside and sometimes gives up things she wanted just so her child can have something better. Surely that is selflessness? Maybe it is the closest thing to it. But even there, isn't there something she gets? Love, attachment, the happiness of seeing her child happy, the satisfaction of seeing them succeed. And if that child grows up and completely abandons her, wouldn't she feel hurt? Again, I am not saying that makes her selfish. I'm asking something else. Can a human being ever perform an action from which they receive absolutely nothing? Not even happiness, peace, love or even the absence of guilt?

Because sometimes, we don't do good things because they make us happy. Sometimes we do them because not doing them would make us feel bad. Suppose your friend calls you at 3 AM because something terrible happened. You are tired, you have college tomorrow, but you still go. Was that selfless? Maybe. But imagine you decided not to go. Wouldn't some part of you keep saying, "He needed me and I wasn't there." So maybe you went partly because helping him was easier than living with the guilt of not helping him. You sacrificed your comfort, yes, but in return, you avoided another kind of suffering. So what exactly counts as selfless here?

And then there is sacrifice. We usually consider sacrifice to be the purest form of selflessness. Someone gives up something important for another person. But why do they sacrifice it? Because the other person's happiness matters more to them than whatever they are giving up. If I give up something worth 10 to me because your happiness is worth 20 to me, did I really act against my own interest? Or did I just choose the thing that mattered more to me?

Maybe that's what love is too. Doing things for someone else because somehow their happiness has become a part of your own happiness. You make them happy, and seeing them happy makes you happy. So who did you really do it for? Them? Or yourself? Or both? Maybe that's the problem. We keep trying to separate selfishness and selflessness as if they are two completely different things, like black and white. Either you did something for yourself, so you are selfish, or you did something for someone else, so you are selfless. But humans don't work like that. Our feelings are mixed, our reasons are mixed, and sometimes even we don't know why we did something.

And I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Maybe kindness doesn't become fake just because it gives you something too. Maybe love doesn't become selfish just because loving someone makes you happy. Maybe helping someone doesn't lose its value just because it makes you feel good afterward. The person still got helped. The hungry person still got food. Your friend still had someone beside him when he needed someone. Something good still happened. But calling all of it completely "selfless" still feels strange to me, because somewhere, somehow, there is always something coming back. Even if that something exists only inside your head.

So, according to me, Selflessness isn't the opposite of selfishness. Maybe they aren't even opposites at all. Any act you do doesn't matter if it is for you or for someone else, you surely are gaining something from the act. Whether it be a "bad experience" or "Sorrow", "Happiness" or "Feel good" or a materialistic thing. Maybe you gain someone's trust, love, peace, the absence of guilt, or simply the ability to think that you did the right thing. But you gain something.

Maybe the question shouldn't be whether humans are capable of being completely selfless. Maybe the question should be whether an act needs to be completely selfless to be good. Because if every good thing we do gives us something in return, and that makes it selfish, then maybe being selfish isn't always the bad thing we think it is.

Now you must be thinking that what can be the opposite of selfishness? Something which is truly selfless. Something where you don't gain money, happiness, respect, love, satisfaction, peace or even that tiny feeling inside your head saying, "I did something good." Does something like that even exist?

Well, keep thinking.