Self Love or Selfishness ?

I have often wondered about the difference between Self Love and Selfishness. How much of self love is okay and when does it become selfishness. Mostly the people that I have seen growing up were either in Self denial or Selfish. I have always come around the black and white brushes of Selfless and Selfish classification of people , the term  self love was new to me in early 2000 where people were writing books about it, sharing motivation quotes on it where they were changing the game of society . for example the mothers who were going out to work leaving babies behind were  called Selfish , or working daughter in laws were selfish for not taking care of in laws and house chores. Where as on the other hand , self negligence and self denial were highly appreciated and admired qualities of being an ideal woman of 70s and 90s. Unfortunately what was often seen was a selfless person surrounded by bunch of selfish people sucking his/her blood and occasionally thrown with admiration remarks  and the poor one only thriving on these remarks.

Then comes the new era of people who are indulged in self love but are not selfish . They will take care of themselves and of others too . More of themselves and less of others 😉  almost negligible. They will force themselves on others because they think it is their right. They need the things that they need irrespective of situation around them. There is problem in their moral compass which fails to tell them where lies the problem. They are always just and right in their opinions , only others have done injustice to them so far. The difference between the previous era and current is the diminished paint of black and white and it is no longer easier to point finger who is selfish now. Everything has been neatly hidden under the carpet of self love without their conscious thinking.

I think the idea behind the post was not so much of rant which it turned out to be  but a conclusive and educative one,  to be aware of our own behavior and its impact to people around us. Where and how  do we set the limit to our self love ? I am not a fan of being in self denial, we should all strive to be happy which is our right but it shouldn’t be at cost of somebody else’s happiness. Our comfort , pleasures should not be come from somebody’s discomfort . Empathy is an attribute that we all need to learn and always keep  practicing it because there is never enough. There will always be situations where we will lack empathy and then we have to ask ourselves deliberately  practice it. Self love is good , much needed and deserved but we need to keep an eye on our subconscious or conscious evil self that it should never become selfishness.