Comic Strips

Yes. Exactly. Being self absorbed is against rational self interest.

I have needed so many people in my life, and they’ve needed me. Even when I absolutely did not want to be there, I did it anyway because they’d do it for me.

It’s been a long time since I read those books, probably more than 20 years now. I probably can’t remember 99% of what I read. I remember the hero worship, I remember that town that fell apart after the factory closed, little things.

I was primed to fall right into that shit. Young, questioning my religion (Appalachian Pentecostal. Like, deeeeeply engrained in everything I was), and from the poorest part of the country and ashamed of it. I seen the hypocrisy of the people around me, the preachers living off of offerings while everyone around me starved, knowing very few people who weren’t dirt poor and living with chickens in their houses (like the town that lost the factory).

I thought that maybe the thing that was holding me back was my altruism, because I wanted to rise above that mess.

Altruism is the only way that people forgotten by the world survive. I wouldn’t have made it without food stamps. I wouldn’t have made it without the people who crawled under the house to fix the sewage and never charged my mother a dime. It didn’t matter how smart I was, I wasn’t on an even playing field. It didn’t matter how much I wanted better things. I wasn’t on an even playing field. So many people are worse off than me, and they come from harder backgrounds than me. Meeting the right people is what it takes to get out of it.

Sorry for the wall of text. I mean, maybe I needed to take that shit so seriously to become a better person by damaging myself trying to be selfish. I feel like I would have been better off without it though.