Provoking the beast.

Is it ever fair to hurt someone in order to gain something for yourself? I ask myself this question as I think about my past actions and my own personal philosophy. I believe in giving. I'm a giver in almost all senses of the word. I like to cook in order to share with other people. I like to share stories in hopes of bringing others joy or education. I like to do favors because as much as it helps the other, it makes me feel good too.

Is there ever a time when giving reaches a threshold? I wonder about what I've given to someone else, in exchange for my own happiness. In some ways, it's a sacrifice to give someone happiness even though you're internally struggling. As a friend of mine said recently, "I can get over it. If I give that person the chance to be happy (like with someone else), then I've helped multiply the happiness". In some sense, isn't that what's it all about (and no, do not insert Hokey-Pokey joke here)?

On the contrary, recently another friend of mine asked me, "Aren't we deep down selfish beings?". I told him I don't believe we are. He claimed that in order to get what one wants, it likely involves hurting someone else. He wasn't meaning in a horrible way; He meant it in an awareness to the absence way. So, one has to know pain, before they appreciate health. One has to know sadness, before they appreciate the happiness... and, in his opinion, one has to know jealousy, before one appreciates the things already possessed. Bringing around that kind of awareness has to involve evoking and awaking a beast of another kind.

So which do I believe? I struggle to hurt others on the path to victory, while I realize that letting someone go may mean a sacrifice for myself. Philosophically, as a giver, I cannot condone using and hurting others as a means to get what I want -- even if it brings me the ultimate happiness. I cannot awake the beast of jealousy for my own needs. I leave that kind of action for the villains.

"But seeming so, for my peculiar end:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at: I am not what I am."

- Iago, Othello