Do you know what it is like to care more about everyone else than you care about your grades, your mental well being or yourself?

Or what it is like to put more effort into making other people happy than you do for your own happiness?

‘The selfless friend’ does. Everyone knows a ‘selfless friend’ they’re the friend that is always checking in on everyone else. They are the one who is always remembering everyone’s birthday, they are the friend always handing out presents, medicine, coffee, hugs, smiles, jokes. They are the friend—or sometimes the stranger— who is always there for everyone. Growing up, they held being called “selfish” synonymous with being called “ugly” or “fat." They were under the impression that being selfish made you a horrible person, someone that no one would like. Someone that no one would want to be around or would want as a friend.

Having known the aforementioned background about my own selfless friend from home—whom I have known a very long time—I asked her how she was doing away at school/in the real world. She expressed her concerns to me… ‘how is it that as we grow older, everyone I see is only ever looking out for their own good?’

After a long conversation/rant, she came to her conclusion, ‘Perhaps the worst part is that people will do anything to make themselves look better—even if that means they have to put other people down or make other people’s lives miserable to do so’.

Again, my ‘selfless friend’ wonders, ‘How can that be’?

How can people go through your life knowing that they are making others miserable? How can people go around thinking their problems are more important—more difficult—than someone else’s? Who told them that they were the only people that mattered in this world? And who made them foolish enough to believe the people that told them so?

People try to justify actions such as these with statements like “no one understands how stressed I am” or “no one understands how much I have going on”. That may be true. But if no one understands how they have it, how can they expect to know how others do? Are those people in everyone else’s minds? Are they with them every moment of every day? How can they possibly compare their struggles to everyone else’s?

Hard is relative. Every single person’s struggle is exactly that—a struggle. People need to stop pitying themselves and recognize that they will never completely understand another person’s issues. So, people need to stop pretending that they do.

In defending and explaining the ideas and thoughts of my selfless friend I am not saying that everyone needs to stop what they are doing and help everyone else. Nor am I saying that everyone needs to start caring as much as my friend does. I am well aware that these are unrealistic expectations and would negatively affect many people.

Everyone (including myself) needs to stop being such insensitive assholes. Those who will find themselves reading this are all smart enough or at least enlightened enough to extract themselves from situations enough to recognize that they 1) are not the center of the universe and 2) are not the only people on this planet with problems, feelings, or difficulties.

So please, let’s start acting like it.

Pick your head up and start REALLY looking at people.

You are not the only soul on this earth…and that can be a good thing…if you make it so.