“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe,
deserve your love and affection.”
Buddha

Are you selfish? Does that question make you cringe? Does it make your back go up – who me? I’m not selfish. Well here you don’t get points for not being selfish; you get points for being selfish.

Years ago I used to hold workshops teaching people how to use essential oils for Aromatherapy. I used to ask participants to complete a health profile I’d written so I could see which essential oils could benefit them. On it were questions about diet, exercise, sleep, stress, headaches and more. The last question was something I added as an afterthought, as a sort of experiment; “Do you ever take the last piece of pie?”

They had trouble with this. I explained that the question was simple: there is a piece of pie left, one piece. Do you take it? Or do you leave it for someone else?

I love pie, in fact, if I invite you to supper I will make a  pie for dessert. To me pie feels like a healthy dessert because of the fruit, but maybe “healthy dessert” is an oxymoron. The thing is, even though I made the pie, even though it was sitting on the counter at my home  and even though everyone had already had a piece, I would never ever take that last piece. Someone else might want it, someone else could enjoy it. Me? No, I never even considered it.

I put the question on the questionnaire because I wanted to see how big a slice of life people claimed for themselves. It seemed there was an [unscientific, eyeball] correlation; the people who had the greatest number of health concerns were the same ones who would never take the last piece of pie.

That got me thinking about the way many in my generation have come to think of selfishness. I regarded it as selfish to take that piece. I started to examine other areas of my life to discover I was on the bottom of all my lists, typical for a mother of a young family, but not very healthy.

Where do you fall on the selfish spectrum? Are you selfish enough to take care of your Self? Does it take getting sick for you to decide to pamper yourself, or treat yourself a little? Do you ever take the last piece of pie?

photo credit: slgckgc