The topic of selfishness and selflessness have been coming up in some of my clients therapy sessions lately, and a recent column published in the NY Times about altruism (Is Pure Altruism Possible? by Judith Lichtenberg, 10/19/10) have got me thinking about the topic more.  Is there such a thing as pure selflessness or pure altruism?  Is selfishness always a problem?  Is there such a thing as good selfishness?  Are we really only playing semantic games?

I’ll begin by saying I don’t want to simply play games with language.  I think there’s something to the issue of selfishness and selflessness that are worth our consideration.  I remember many years ago being interviewed by the magazine Rhode Island Monthly for my work as an AIDS Buddy volunteer.  In the interview I quoted the His Holiness the Dalai Lama about good selfishness.  The idea is that by doing good for others, good feelings accrue to the doer, and this is a form of good selfishness.  I think it’s a valid point.  So in this regard, selfishness per se isn’t a problem.

The other thing about pure selflessness versus selfishness is that nobody likes a doormat.  I think it’s vitally important to stand up for oneself, to manifest sufficient self-respect, to not allow anyone to take advantage of you.  To be “selfless” under these kinds of conditions is problematic and frankly doesn’t reflect a healthy “self” to begin with.

But all this talk of self evokes the Buddhist in me.  Buddhism has a lot to say about the self, and depending on which brand of Buddhism we’re talking about, they have slightly different things to say.  Theravada Buddhism, sometimes described as the older version of Buddhism, has a concept called Anatta, which loosely means no-self.  In Theravada’s version of enlightenment, the self and all of material existence drops away and you remain immersed in a sea of pure, blissful nothingness.  The Mahayana tradition, which came later, has a different view and rejects the concept of Anatta.  Mahayana Buddhism embraces both the relative and absolute, form and emptiness, and enlightenment in this tradition reflects a non-dual union of both.  I have embraced the latter view and my current studies are in the Mahayana cannon of scripture.

From a non dual perspective, if you do good for someone else you are literally doing good for yourself, because while there is the appearance of a self over here and the other over there, there is experientially no separation.  Thus, pure compassion arises naturally.  My meditation teacher once asked his teacher—one of the most significant modern proponents of Theravada Buddhism, Mahasi Sayadaw—about compassion, and the response was that Theravada Buddhism doesn’t account for compassion.  I prefer a Buddhism that has compassion as its foundation.

Which brings us back to selfish selflessness.  From the Mahayana Buddhist perspective, there is no contradiction whatsoever.

Dan Savage, the Editorial Director for the Stranger and also the syndicated columnist who writes Savage Love recently responded to the suicide of the gay 15-year-old Billy Lucas by starting the YouTube channel titled “It Gets Better”. Billy Lucas killed himself by hanging after years of being harassed and bullied for being gay. Dan wrote “I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”

Dan described how gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids because the kids parents might be homophobic or they go to school in conservative communities that wouldn’t allow a Gay Straight Student Alliance or a gay speaker to come into their schools. Dan had the insight that he can speak to these kids directly via the Internet and started the YouTube channel. It’s been getting a lot of press attention, and justly so.

But since Savage started the site, there have been a plethora of other suicides reported, including Asher Brown, a 13 year old in Texas who hung himself, Seth Walsh, another 13 year old in California who also hung himself, and 18 year old Tyler Clementi in New Jersey, who was secretly videotaped making out with another male student by his college roommate and another student, and then the video was posted on the internet. Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge that spans the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York.

And finally, Anderson Cooper has reported on the Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell and his bizarre obsession, stalking, and harassment of gay student body president Chris Armstrong at the University of Michigan. The interview is “must see TV”. Armstrong doesn’t appear to be at risk for suicide, but this story highlights the kind of bullying and harassment gay youth experience on a daily basis. The tragedy of this story is that the tormentor is an adult. Shirvell appears to be a seriously troubled individual and in my opinion needs the help of a competent mental health professional.

I don’t believe that all these stories coming to the fore right now are just a coincidence. Rather, I suspect there is some sort of critical mass of attention forming around this issue and it’s finally getting the attention that it is due, in large part because of the efforts of Dan Savage to bring attention to this tragic, previously invisible problem.

It’s true that if you can survive the torment of growing up gay in an openly hostile society (and sometimes a hostile family) that things do indeed get better. But sadly, for Billy and Asher and Seth and Tyler, they didn’t hear that message soon enough, and they ended the torment in the only way they knew how. This has to stop, and my deepest prayer is that all this attention on this problem will lead us to that goal.

I came across an interesting article on the web site PsychCentral.com titled “Proof Positive: Can Other People Make Us Happy?” by Daniel Tomasulo, PhD. He describes both old and new research that posits that happiness is largely a byproduct of healthy, satisfying, connected relationships.

I spend a lot of my time in my sessions with clients talking about relationships, or sometimes the lack thereof. Some clients come to me specifically with relationship issues, sometimes the relationship issues are secondary to their presenting problem, and sometimes clients are struggling with the lack of satisfying relationships in their lives and they experience a profound loneliness and emptiness that impacts everything else.

Regardless of where clients are with the issue of relationships, I emphasize the importance of good communication as the lubricant that keeps relationships healthy and optimally functioning. Sometimes the task is to improve honesty and self revelation, sometimes it’s overcoming the fear of self disclosure and exposure, sometimes it’s just taking steps to put oneself in settings where other people can be met and overcoming the fear of judgment and rejection. Whatever the individual challenges, we all have work to do with regards to relationships.

And the benefits from that work should lead inexorably to more happiness. I think the effort is worth it. What do you think?

I’m part of a list serve from a spiritual community where I was once a resident. There are often updates from past residents about their lives and one recent individual wrote about how she’s currently working with “homeless homos with AIDS”. I immediately found her use of language to be insensitive and inappropriate and I responded to the list serve with my opinion. It seems I struck a bit of a nerve since the topic of language became a lively thread for the past few days.

This incident makes me think of Laura Schlessinger and her recent incident with the use of the “n” word. When a black women called in to complain about her white husband and his white friends insensitive use of racial language, Schlessinger went on an n-word rant, using the word multiple times to highlight what she deemed the hypocrisy of black peoples use of the n word where others were forbidden from using it. I take her point, but I find her method of raising that point to be offensive and gratuitous.

I would argue that if we all agree that some words are offensive and hurtful then they shouldn’t be used by anyone in an effort to do no harm to others. The women I mentioned above who described homeless homos with AIDS justified her use of that language by identifying herself as gay. I wrote back and told her I didn’t think it mattered, particularly because she only identified herself as such after the fact and because she didn’t know who her audience was when she used that language.

I will admit to using that sort of language in the privacy of all gay settings, and I recognize that it’s a risky business to play with language in that way. At the same time, I would never use that sort of language in a mixed setting or when I couldn’t be sure of the sexual identity of all those present. Am I marking myself as a hypocrite? Perhaps. But my point is that language matters, and we should all be more sensitive to its use, and abuse.

I had the good fortune to spend this past weekend with dear friends in their lovely home in Truro. It was a relaxing time for all except for one small issue: I have a difficult time adjusting to a new bed in unfamiliar surroundings, so I didn’t get the best nights sleep.

This reminded me of all the new research that keeps accumulating about the importance of sleep hygiene (that’s the somewhat goofy word to describe good sleep). While a little dated, a 2005 study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep per night, and they report that represents a drop of about two hours per night since the 19th century, one hour per night over the past 50 years, and about 15 to 25 minutes per night just since 2001. Folks, we’re sleeping a lot less than we used to and it’s not without consequence.

While it might be common knowledge at this point that decreased sleep can impact mood and cognition, what’s only recently being discovered is how sleep deprivation impacts hormone regulation and weight gain. Multiple epidemiological studies show that people who chronically get too little sleep have a far greater risk of being overweight and developing diabetes. Additionally, sleep deprivation can lead to higher risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

In this fast paced, always-on, round-the-clock temptation world we live in, it’s easy to avoid healthy sleep behaviors. But isn’t it easier to avoid weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease by sleeping a full 8 hours than to try to treat these conditions once they’ve developed? Seems so to me.

Sleep well!

An article published last week in the LA Times reports that a drug used to treat congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that causes ambiguous genitalia (also known as the condition called intersex) can have the secondary affect of decreasing the likelihood that females with the disorder will be gay and increasing the chances that she will have more feminine behavioral traits.

Adrenal hyperplasia causes the accumulation of male hormones (testosterone). Medical science is increasing their understanding of the effects of hormones in the development of sex and gender. Apparently the effects of testosterone only affect female fetuses.

The larger question for me is, if given the chance, should a parent exercise the option of impacting the development of his or her child’s sexual orientation. The question itself presupposes that there is something wrong with one sexual orientation and that the other is preferable, and therefore any action that leads to the preferable outcome is justified. I find this line of thinking morally dubious.

The irony in all this is that the opponents of gay rights have consistently argued that sexual orientation is merely a choice, not an immutable characteristic. This research seems to demonstrate that there is something that happens physiologically that leads to homosexuality. If true, then I predict it wont be too long before the opponents change their tune, agree that homosexuality is a biological predisposition, but that it is inherently pathological and requires any available treatment, such as this new one to treat congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

We’re entering into very interesting waters here and I believe the only option is to be well informed. I hope this entry is but a small step in that direction.

When I redesigned this web site a few months ago, one of the prime motivators for me was to include a blog. And yet, when I look at my productivity over the weeks and months since it’s been in place, I find it lacking. So here I admit that writing is a struggle for me. It’s odd since I spend my days immersed in language. But I find the spoken word and the written word to be totally different forms, and I much prefer speaking to writing.

My lack of output is not for a lack of time or intention. I guess if I had to be perfectly honest, there’s a big dose of fear about “failure”. I just don’t have a lot of confidence about myself as a writer. The “not good enough” thought arises with more frequency than I would like to admit. The fact that the thought arises isn’t necessarily the problem; the fact that I listen to it, believe what it says, and allow it to alter my behavior is the problem.

Enough with all of that! With today’s post I will recommit to writing something for this blog as I had originally intended: one post per week. If I fail, then it will be more grist for the mill, but if I succeed, then perhaps everyone wins.

Wish me luck!