Just before the new year began, at least a few times a day I would pass by someone saying something about their new year’s resolution. We’ve all made them. They’re usually about losing weight, eating better, working harder, procrastinating less, the list goes on. I’ve made one before the start of each year and surprise surprise, I have never lasted very long. So this time around I decided I would try something that would really matter. It took me a while to figure out exactly what my new year’s resolution would be, but my epiphany came through my reoccurring frustration of one of the biggest human flaws: selfishness.
I think selfishness is particularly deceptive for one reason: we’re so blinded by our own wants and our needs that we forget we all have needs. It subtly convinces us that we’re right, or that what we want should take precedence over what anyone else wants. Because after all, we have a good reason for wanting it. It only becomes visible when we let our emotions rise to the surface because what they want is not what we want.
Selfishness can also fool us into thinking that our good deeds couldn’t possibly make us anything but an upstanding citizen. I see it in the church all the time. We go on mission trips, we volunteer giving turkey dinners to the poor during Thanksgiving, wipe away tears as we write a check for the starving children on the television screen. Maybe we even gave the homeless man standing by the intersection a little change. But we get back to our everyday lives, flip the switch, and it’s all about us again.
Suddenly we’re having to much fun to spend time the depressing friend who has no one left, the old lady in front of us couldn’t possibly move any slower, and everyone around us is too messed up to be the person that we want them to be. It’s funny how quickly the missionary who loves people, doesn’t care enough about the people in his own back yard. The one who wrote the check? She keeps breaking promises to the friend who regrets the day she was born. The girl who volunteered for the Thanksgiving meal donation never makes the effort to spend time with people who care about her, yet complains about those who don’t make her a priority.
So this year my new year’s resolution is to be more selfless. What a difference we could make in the lives of others if we spent more time thinking about their needs than we spend focusing on our own. Maybe the woman who has never felt loved will feel honored that someone took the time to listen. Maybe the man who’s never known a loyal friend will find one in the man who dropped everything to be there for him. Maybe for once the girl who has never had a voice will hear the words, “what do you think?” I would hope we would learn that it’s not always about us. And maybe we’ll even learn the key to that thing called love.