selfish and selfless

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My daughter called yesterday from Pennsylvania to fill me in on the condition of her fiance's father, a man in his 40's who had been taken to the hospital with what may or may not have been a stroke. As is increasingly true with my children, Olivia had something to say that brought me up short ... made me rethink what I might or might not have really thought about.

Rich's father was not a man with whom Rich had a fruitful relationship in the past. There were any number of sometimes painful bits of evidence to support a protective distance Rich had adopted as a way of coping with his male progenitor. Nevertheless, I suggested to Olivia that even a bad relationship was, in fact, a relationship and that I hoped she would support Rich and be his friend in what might be a dutiful, irked, or confusing time. Yeah, yeah ... she knew.

And as the phone conversation wore down, I said I hoped she and Rich would treat themselves to a bit of relaxation over the weekend -- put in a movie, eat pizza, go out to a club or do whatever felt like a time when they could be at ease. And it was then that Oliv dropped the other shoe: She and Rich were going to Rich's remarried mom's house for the weekend and during that visit, they would be discussing their plans to 'elope' to Fiji in January ... just go away and get married without all the intricate and sometimes annoying tendrils of having family on hand. Oliv was not looking forward to the weekend, but Rich seemed to feel that they had to get their marital cards on the table. Oliv said she told Rich she would do her best to keep her trap shut -- Rich's mom could be quite dramatic and when she heard the first whisper of the elopement plans had said there was "no way" she wasn't going to be present at her only son's wedding. Oliv said she would try to be restrained ... but she couldn't promise ... there was always the possibility that she might feel the need to tell mom to stick it where the sun don't shine.

And then she said, referring to the family she had grown up in, "We did not grow up in a selfish family, but I am beginning to learn that not every family is like that."

The observation caught me flat-footed. Where did it come from? Was it true? How would anyone go about verifying such a statement? I could feel the warming tentacles of pleasure rising up to embrace me: I don't like selfishness much and being indirectly credited with selflessness was ... cozy and flattering. But what the hell did it mean? How could anyone know such a thing?

Does the selfish person know that s/he is selfish?

Does the selfless person know that s/he is selfless?

I couldn't really imagine it. Selfish and selfless people are what they are and it is only others who tantalize themselves with the observations of "selfish" or "selfless." How did my daughter come to this conclusion? Was she just full of pleasantly-acceptable social bullshit or was I missing something?

I wasn't really sure, but I enjoyed the jolt.
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