Be a Little Selfish

Nemo dat quod non habet

Be a little selfish now, so you can be a lot more selfless later than you could ever be now.

Boye and Nneka were two friends who each had a bunch of raspberries. They also both had access to large arable farmlands and the capacity to plant.

They had a few friends and family living with them too, and when Boye pulled out his bunch of raspberries, they wanted a piece of it, and he freely gave. He gave of his fruits and they loved him and appreciated him for it. He was dubbed to be such a selfless individual who cares about his friends and members of his family. He was what you would have called cheerful giver if you saw him when he was giving.

If you knew Boye, you wouldn't have been surprised, because he always said he found fulfilment in giving out things.

He gave out all his raspberries and everyone ate to their satisfaction. Even Nneka ate out of the berries.

Two days later, Nneka brought out her fresh berries, and everyone surrounded her too so she could share it like Boye did, but she refused. Vehemently. She wasn't going to be sharing her berries with anybody!

Instead, she had other plans.

On second thought, she plucked three berries from the bunch and gave them, asked that they cut into bits and share amongst themselves.

As you would have imagined, they called her selfish and greedy. She became a bad person who doesn't care about other people. Couldn't she be more like Boye, her friend, that shared his berries the other day?

Only if she was more selfless! Only if she was more giving! Only if she loved more! One of them even said she only looked after herself and doesn't care about anybody else.

Unlike Boye, she wasn't a good person.

Nneka heard all that, and it hurt her, but she knew they wouldn't understand even if she tried to explain it. They wanted it now, and she wished she could give them, but Nneka left the house and journeyed towards one of the farmlands she had access to, and then planted her raspberries.

By the time she came back, she was holding a hoe in her hand, they saw it, still ignored it, and kept talking about how she had a character flaw. She knew how to eat other people's fruits, but couldn't freely give her own.

They disliked her for a couple of days until everything became normal.

12 months down the line, Nneka invited Boye and Ben with her. She held three large, empty buckets with her, and even when they asked what she wanted to use if for, she simply said, "Don't worry, you'll see."

By the time they got to the farm, they couldn't believe their eyes. A farmland filled with raspberries, it'd be a waste of time to start counting. It was magical!

Nneka dropped the buckets and started plucking the berries. Her friends stood there, dumbfounded, until she snapped lightly at them to start helping to pluck.

She picked up one of the berries, rinsed it and threw it into her mouth. "You can also eat as many as you want while you help pluck into the bucket."

They filled up the buckets with raspberries, made a mental note to go back the next day to continue plucking.

Before the story gets any longer, I'm sure you can already imagine what happened when they got home. The house was flowing with raspberries. It even flowed over to the neighbours and their friends. Now everyone are Nneka's fruits and praised her for it.

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Now I'm sure you already get the point of this story. Delayed gratification, and some of us have mastered the art of delaying gratification, saving money and resources, investing, etc., but we have somehow forgotten to save and plant ourselves.

We give of ourselves freely, every minute of everyday. Put other people ahead of us, so we can be seen as the “good person,” the selfless person, who puts everyone ahead of themselves.

We help out everyday, to our own detriment. We give of our bunch of fruit because "whoever freely gives will freely receive."

It is good, but where do we draw the line? Everyday, we do our best not to seem selfish or self-serving, so we give of ourselves daily selflessly, until we don't have the capacity to even be selfless anymore, and then we become the very thing we dreaded to be in the first place.

Many of us are selfless on emptiness. Forgetting that we cannot scatter abroad unless we first gather. Nemo dat quod non habet. You cannot give what you do not have. To give, you first have to have. And to have and have abundantly so that you can give abundantly, you need to learn to be selfish in the moment.

You need to learn to put yourself first, because only when you're healthy can you give of your fullness. Only when you're wealthy can you give of your abundance. People will require that you lose your health for their sakes if you give in. Not because they are bad people, but because they are insatiable. It's the nature of man.

The best you can do for yourself, in order to give of your fullness at a later date, is to first give to yourself first.

Regardless of who you are, whether a parent, a friend, a spouse, a colleague, you will not serve the people in your life properly if you don't serve yourself abundantly first!

It might be uncomfortable in the interim. Your child might want breastmilk and cry the roof down in this moment, but if you haven't eaten enough and taken in enough first, you won't have milk to give.

So learn to be a little selfish. If you have enough to give out of right now, please by all means, but you have to remember that you need to first have enough of yourself if you want to give of yourself satisfactorily to the world around you.

When you keep serving and serving everyone else but yourself, you will be spent, and then thrown away by the people you have been serving, because nobody keeps an empty, used up barrel around.

It might sound harsh, but that's the truth. So while you're going around doing good, ensure you're retreating, being selfish too, giving to yourself too. If you're “good” all the time especially when you're not good to yourself, then something is wrong somewhere. You're spoiling yourself for other people who'd push you away when you are not capable of giving anything anymore.

Enough said.

Make it your mission to be a little selfish, so you can be a lot more selfless later.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨