Selfish vs self-care

Welcome to the first posting in a new series. As many as you may know, I am an English teacher. In particular, I have a real fascination with language, word choice, and word meaning.

WARNING: This is going to get wordy and ever dorkier than my usual posts.

There are quite a few words that are used incorrectly in our everyday speak. Sometimes, this is because people don’t know any better. An example of this could be the differences between they’re/there/their or too/to/two. What I’m talking about are a word’s denotation – its actual dictionary definition and its connotation, or its meaning as it’s used every day.

I want to start today with the term selfish. When i originally started this post, I wanted to find a way to prove that being selfish could be a positive thing. For some clarification, I went to THE SOURCE, The Oxford English Dictionary to get as thorough of a definition as I could:

The term’s denotation (or literal dictionary definition) can be a positive or negative word. However for most people, selfish carries a negative connotation.

Here’s where I try to go a little deeper

Obviously, I am talking about something deeper than word meaning, namely perception. In our culture, we celebrate the idea of thinking of others before one thinks of themselves. While that is a great virtue, it also carries that pendulum effect. We care about caring about others to the point that we reject things like self-care and self-preservation.

There is a lot of talk about how men today are expected to be. I know because I’ve written about this myself. Men are expected to be strong, but not heartless; emotional but not whiny; a firm hand that without being a tyrant. But more often than not, men lose a bit of themselves when they decide to be the foundation for the family. We see so concerned with the welfare of the family that we ignore our own needs.

Don’t get me wrong, thinking of others is very sweet. But we have to remember to take care of ourselves. Whether you are the dad, the dutiful child or the single parent scuffling by in survival-mode, We can’t do anybody else any good if we’re not looking after ourselves first.

Earlier I mentioned the word perception. There’s an old expression that “perception is reality”. Regardless of how many dorks like me are spouting off about connotation and denotation, the perception that being selfish is a bad thing. And since that’s the belief, then selfish is negative word. Furthermore, it’s that negative connotation attached to the word selfish that has resulted in self-care coming into vogue.

Looking up the etymology of the term self-care, I learned that was first coined in the 50s and spread to wider use a decade later by members of the Black Panther party. This Teen Vogue article explains that meditation and yoga were used by party members while incarcerated. Later these were seen as support systems for navigating America’s socio-political system of the time.

May I add that Teen Vogue is a much more credible news source than it probably has any right to be???

I’ve only heard the term come into much wider use in the last few years; particularly during the Covid lockdowns of 2020. People had no choice but to be more mindful of their own headspace. Self-care isn’t looking out for yourself at the cost of others. Self care is self-preservation.

Where does self-care become being selfish?

It IS possible to have too much of a good thing. So where does self-care cross the proverbial line? At what point does administering self-care become being selfish? When does the good thing become bad? As soon as we completely disregard the needs of others and place our needs above them is when self-care descends into being selfish.

So to summarize: It’s good to think about others; as long as we don’t ignore our own needs. Looking out for ourselves is okay; as long as we don’t completely forsake others in the process. Yeah, that sounds like a paradox.

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The article “Selfish vs Self-Care” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob

2 responses to “Selfish vs self-care”

mel23h

December 15, 2023

A good read. Thanks. I was always told you have to look out for yourself first. I still tend to put others first, call it a habit persay.

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1. rebuilding rob
  
  December 15, 2023
  
  Thanks for the kind words!
  
  I know self-care has been really one of the buzz terms lately. And I remember, I think it was on an episode of Star Trek, the next generation of all places, where a character was told “it’s important to think about others, but you have to sometimes put yourself first!
  
  Since then, I’ve always been trying to find that balance, and trying to figure out if there is something good to come out of the word, folks selfish that was the whole point of this post. But the further I went on, I started thinking about the difference between being selfish and practicing self-care .
  
  It’s all about balance, I guess
  
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