I was feeling quite at ease today, finding it quite relaxing to lie around the house with nothing more to do than help the kids with their schoolwork. But a phone call from her set me ill at ease, sending my stomach to churning again. I realized later this afternoon that I had been quite calm and content in her absence, but stressed to have to talk to her. She of course made remarks about missing me, but it was a sentiment I could not share and I realized it was because missing her has been the standard state of mind for me for so long I have just acclimated to it. I have felt the same in her absence as I have in her presence for some time now. Perhaps that is normal for people in a long term relationship, but the way I feel now is distinctly different from periods of separation in the past.
Anyway, all day I've wondered about people who give freely to a cause they consider larger than themselves. Are they truly enriched by the experience? I mean, step back a bit. Of course, everyone holds them up as examples of virtue, because we all say we want the world to be full of people who are giving of themselves to others. But I can't help but wonder if the unspoken undertone to this belief is that everyone wants everyone ~else~ to be generous, so they themselves can lap in the largesse of those people duped into a giving nature by a social mandate. Or perhaps in other words, is a call for self sacrifice in others actually just self serving? The bum on the street corner will say "god bless you" if you give them a dollar, but you can rest assured they consider the blessing to be entirely god's work to do and not theirs. This is probably in part due to my Western capitalist mind at work, unable and unwilling to see that subsuming oneself to the greater good lifts us all. I guess. At any rate, there's always been a part of me that wonders, at the end of the day, if the generous person who gives yet gets nothing in return (I've been that guy for a while now, trust me) has really been enriched, or merely fleeced. Add to this the fact that I don't believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. I only get ONE chance to enjoy this life to the maximum extent possible. And the older I get the more I understand that self sacrifice is really not bringing me the kinds of experiences I enjoy. Wow, I know I know, I'm a total bastard for saying that but it's true. I'm not going to use this cutting self knowledge for evil, as some sort of excuse to take a turn toward hedonistic abandon. I am still a responsible guy when people are relying on me.
Or maybe this feeling is just due to my very particular experience of giving oneself. In other words, my perception of sacrifice is inaccurate because I've never felt it being returned to me. Ever.
