Honesty

“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.” - Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Complicated sentence, that one. Makes you have to put your thinking cap on. Calculate when your heart intersects your ego. Maths are hard.

Most people don't intend to be be selfish, but it's the default setting for human nature. We feel ourselves superior, more important. Doesn't everyone around us see how special we are, and that we must be attended to? Unless you've had a crappy life, maybe even been gas-lighted, your self esteem doesn't stop at your front door. Your confidence creates your kingdom. Learning to temper that is where conscience comes from.

Those who don't tame their selfishness often end up alone. Nobody wants to share a life with a maniacal partner, one who thinks of themselves without consideration of others. While perfectly normal to be selfish, normal people learn to feel badly when they take advantage, when they trample feelings.

The guilt often comes quietly: the look in another's eyes when you've shattered their heart, the quiet that follows your tantrum. Figuring out that you were the one out of control is easier than accepting the responsibility for it. That ego just won't accept the burden of conscience.

We are all masters of our own fate. No one can hurt us without getting our permission, however succinctly. The reality of the pain we allow ourselves isn't lessened when we realize it was our own doing. Like the selfish prat that throws his toys in a fit of pique` and then wonders why no one wants to play with him, our conscience nags us to be better if we expect another outcome. Hearts aren't toys, and relationships shatter under the weight of one's humanity.