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Chapter Two

Excessive Self-Interest

But enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of my children? Aren’t they cute? — One of your friends (or, uh, you?)

Have you ever shared something of yourself with someone else — something meaningful and life-affecting — and had the person you’re talking to say, “Oh, that happened to me,” and who then proceeded to turn the conversation to herself?

It’s certainly happened to me, and more than once. I’m sure it has happened to you. Every young couple excitedly anticipating their wedding or the birth of a child has had the experience of announcing their happy news (or sharing their anxieties) only to be regaled with stories from well-meaning people who can’t wait to share their own experiences, and they’re usually cautionary tales (“Let me tell you about Italian mothers-in-law; your meatballs will never be right!”) or outright horror stories (“Thirty-six hours I was in labor, and I didn’t just have front labor, I had back labor; I had thigh labor; I never screamed so much!”).

Over the years, it has seemed to me there might be some element of mischief to all of these stories — I am positive that one of my aunties took secret delight in turning my husband pale with her stories of projectile vomiting, overflowing diapers with neon-colored offerings, and well-intentioned nursing adventures gone horribly awry.

For the most part, though, when people share such stories, they’re not trying to steal anyone’s thunder or stick a wedge into someone’s happiness. In an odd way, they’re trying to share in it.

When our son became engaged, and we related some of our experiences in dealing with the traditions and expectations of others, we quite naturally fell into retelling our own horror stories. We weren’t indifferent to our son or his bride, but we could only speak to what we knew, and that necessarily meant turning the subject us-ward. In situations such as these, people end up talking about themselves, often at length, because it’s what they know. In a way, they are helpfully demonstrating that the difficult things bridal couples and new parents focus on so intently become — with hindsight and the balm of time — hilarious memories.

Such oversharing is usually well intended, and most of the time it does not leave us feeling like we have just played straight man for the gratuitous amusement of an empathy-challenged narcissist who is, in the end, quite indifferent to us.

The “little sin” of excessive self-interest is distinct from narcissism, which is a personality disorder and a legitimate illness, because it involves us making a choice to prefer our own interests, our own stories, and our own voices over those around us.

Not long ago I had lunch with a few business associates, men I had corresponded with but never met. After discussing work issues, which I managed to do like an adult human being, we quite naturally began to chat about our families and personal lives, and that’s where my circuitry went a little haywire. Both gentlemen managed to mention their spouses and children with obvious pride and affection, but with what I would call a seemly restraint.

Not so, Lizzie. Oh … not so.

Now, I grant you, I work from home and sometimes will go a whole day without the opportunity to use my tongue, so when I get around people I can be a bit of a motormouth, and I know it. On this particular afternoon, I had been housebound due to illness; it had literally been weeks since I’d had real conversations with anyone beyond my family, so the pump was primed. Once I began talking about my sons, I lost all sense of professional decorum and began to gush like a broken water main.

The men were perfectly tolerant of the torrent, but while my mouth was flapping, my guardian angel began shouting an interior cue that sounded a lot like begging, or a heavenly face palm: “Please … stop … talking. Ask them something about their kids, like a normal person would!”

Finally, I was thrown a six-word lifesaver: “You mentioned your son studies biology,” I said to the man on my left, and as he answered I felt myself mercifully pulled out from the verbal deluge, only slightly worse for wear.

The devilish spirit of excess thus departed from me, but only because I really wanted it to, and had made a choice to let someone else brag a little, and to actually be present to, and enjoy, the pride he took in his son. I could just as easily have chosen to ignore my better angel and prattled on until my companions, lacking guns, or ropes from which to hang themselves, instead scalded their throats with hot coffee swallowed too fast, in order to end the meal and make their escape.

Excessive self-interest involves choosing to either be considerate of others or completely immune to them. It is a “little sin” for certain, because when we indulge it, we tend to stop seeing the equally interesting humanity of the people around us. They become utilitarian objects; receptacles for our endless streams of me-thought and mine-words. We overwhelm them with our yelps or burden them with our yokes; and although it might — at first consideration — seem like a measure of insecurity is involved in this excess (“Seems, madam? Nay, it is!”), all of it, even the insecurity, is a function and by-product of pride.

I have a friend who is a terrific conversationalist. He can chat extensively with anyone, and do it with a good deal of empathy and charm. People love to talk with him because he manages to convey the sort of warm and lively interest that makes people feel good about themselves. He chooses to be friendly to people who are friendly to him, with one exception. That exception is me. No matter how I try to fall into the “friendly chat” category, I never quite make it. In the odd moment when I manage to squeeze in a few words, he will look away and keep talking — about anything at all that is going on in his life — as long as it means not engaging with anything at all that is going on in mine.

It wasn’t always that way, but over the past 20 years or so he has become unsure of himself around me, and therefore afraid, and in that state of insecurity his choice is to protect himself with a wall of words. At a picnic a few years ago, I deliberately brought up issues in my life, just to see if I could raise any sort of authentic response from him, toward the actuality of my presence and my personhood. As expected, I could not. Any subject I tried to broach he immediately used to completely ignore me by turning the subject to himself. If I mentioned a child’s recent bout of bronchitis, he spoke to the air about nearly dying of pneumonia; when I mentioned a sudden opportunity to visit Vienna, he had a long cruise to think and talk about.

It was a little like playing tennis with someone and having every serve volleyed back, over the head, with no possibility of engagement.

Eventually, I gave him the serve; I stopped talking about myself — thus offering him no chance to lob a topic out of reach — and instead just flat out asked, “So, what’s new with you?”

He simply said, “Nothing.”

Nothing. Game incomplete. There was absolutely no way he was going to directly respond to, or acknowledge, anything about my life, and he certainly wasn’t going to give me any sort of opening by answering, as he might to another, “Nothing, what’s new with you?” I understood — probably better than he did — that he had made a choice to block me, until I was effectively absent from his presence.

Another friend had watched the whole exchange and said to me, later, “Wow, he really hates you.”

“No,” I disagreed. “I think he actually loves me a lot, which is why he can’t bear to be around me.”

“That makes no sense,” he said.

“It does. Once I told him something I thought he needed to know; it turns out he didn’t. He thought I was trying to be cruel. Now, he can only feel bad around me, so he does that thing you saw.”

He looked at me askance: “Were you cruel? Intentionally?”

“No, I really wasn’t, not intentionally,” I said, sadly. “I was just very, very stupid, and stupidity made me cruel.”

That, of course, was my own prideful mistake, and guess what? It was born of excessive self-interest. The self-help movement of the 1990s, which I had bought into, taught me to focus excessively upon myself, and to “honor myself” — like a little idol — by burdening another with an offering of truth best left unshared. Everything that followed came from my own terribly grave and destructive little sin of me-ism, taken to an unhealthy extreme.

Here be monsters. In the case of that relationship, as no opening to ask forgiveness will be permitted, what healing may come between us, at this point, I leave to God’s discretion, and to the prayers of good friends.

And I impugn no sin on the one unwilling to engage with me. I think his unwillingness may fall under Just War guidelines, as a necessary means of self-preservation. Like the Catechism says, “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor…. The one is intended, the other is not”¹ (n. 2263).

I indict only myself, a witless and self-interested aggressor.

—

What Does Catholicism Say About Excessive Self-Interest?

“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

— John 15:13 (RSV)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…. Love is … not boastful; it is not arrogant.

— 1 Corinthians 13:1, 4-5 (RSV)

Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

— 1 Corinthians 10:24 (RSV)

It is always the secure who are humble.

— G. K. Chesterton

Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter…. Do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself.

— St. Charles Borromeo

The only reason why the Immaculate permits us to fall is to cure us from our self-conceit, from our pride, to make us humble and thus make us docile to the divine graces.

— St. Maximilian Kolbe

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

— St. Augustine

It is better for you to have little than to have much which may become the source of pride.

— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

There never can have been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.

— St. Augustine

We put pride into everything, like salt.

— St. John Vianney

—

How Do We Break Away From the Sin, or Habit, of Excessive Self-Interest?

Listen: “Listen” is the first word of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, and it is the word whose application can speak to a multitude of sins, because if we are listening, we are not talking. If we are listening, we are mindful not of ourselves but of our surroundings. When we are listening, we are hearing and being present to the person who is before us. When we are truly present to others, we find ourselves relieved of the burden of ourselves, and often we discover that our own thoughts need adjusting, thanks to what we have heard.

Limit time on social media: Nothing so trains us to obsess over ourselves, and how others perceive us, or to stew over our own musings, as social media. Twitter encourages us to think of a brief, under-thought pronouncement delivered w/unpunctuated wrds like dis as something so wise and witty that we feel comfortable barging into the conversations of others to share it. Facebook tells us that our every thought is a likable one, our children are, at all times, too adorable for words, and our “friends” think we are absolutely brilliant, for as long as we agree with them. The temptation to remain agreeable, keep your thoughts in the acceptable box, and keep serving up the praise-fodder is enormous and seductive. How can you emerge from spending a few hours, every day, in such an environment and not develop an excessive sense of your imprint on the world, and the wonderfulness that is you?

Learn to make a daily examen: The Ignatian practice of a daily examen is an antidote to the superficial uplift we find on social media; it allows us to still focus upon ourselves, but in a more analytical and balanced way. It is brief spiritual exercise devised by St. Ignatius of Loyola that can help you become refocused on what matters, and spiritually refreshed and renewed. Sitting quietly in a comfortable (but not nap-encouraging) position, you work your way through five steps:

1. You bring yourself into awareness of God’s presence by thanking him for what you noticed during the day that made you aware of his grace. Perhaps your attention was captured by birdsong, or a beautiful sunrise, and you have a momentary sense of God’s grandeur. Perhaps you wondered at your children and realized that they all are precisely the people you met at their birth, personalities already intact, and you saw God’s design in their individuality. Whatever touched you, remember it, and express thanks to God.

2. Go over the day, asking God to make you aware of where he had especially been with you.

3. Consider how you felt over the course of the day — where you had lost your temper, or felt left out, or confused, or really joyful. This is also a time to be honest with God, and with yourself, about “what I have done and … what I have failed to do.” As in maybe you really did spend way too much time on Facebook and failed to pay attention to something someone you love was saying to you. Maybe you didn’t listen well.

4. Ask forgiveness for your failings and for your sins, little and bigger. If one particular moment stands out, ask God to give you wisdom on that matter so that you might learn from it. Be eager for instruction. We can never go wrong by echoing Solomon’s prayer for “an understanding heart.”

5. Ask for the graces to do better tomorrow, and let God know that you gratefully look forward to a new day.

An examen is not terribly time-consuming. St. Benedict might have said of the examen that it “contains nothing harsh or burdensome” because it is merely a review of the day between you and God, but it is a review that covers all of the spiritual bases: it begins not with a “please” but with a “thank you,” and then manages an apology where needed before asking for anything more. Taking these 10 or 15 minutes a day to meet and talk to God is an amazingly simple yet powerful way to increase our capacity for mindfulness, which will make us better aware of other people.

That will, in short order, lessen the sinful excesses of our own self-interest.

Pray (This prayer or your own)

Heavenly Father, your psalmist begged, “Set, O Lord, a guard over my mouth; / keep watch at the door of my lips!” (Ps 141:3). So often our mouths and our minds are reckless, running by the full force of our egos. We are so interested in being seen, and noticed, and thought well of by others, that we ironically render ourselves unable to see those very same people — and then, by our thoughtlessness, we injure them; we use them as sounding boards or reflecting mirrors, rather than respecting the dignity with which you have endowed their humanity. Please help me to keep a watch on my own excesses, that I may be more eager to see than to be seen; more willing to hear than to be heard — all that your creation may be better served. In Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.