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Strive to Be Selfless

BEFORE MY WIFE and I decided to start trying to have children, we agreed that we should first get a dog. A few weeks after that discussion I surprised my wife with a seven-week-old Border collie mix puppy that had been rescued by the local shelter. While the shelter staff had named her Runtley because she was the runt of a litter of thirteen brothers and sisters, we decided to call her Scruffy instead based on her disheveled yet undeniably cute appearance.

Almost immediately we realized that while we were in love with the idea of having a dog, we were in way over our heads. Scruffy chewed through the linoleum floor in the kitchen, tore up the floorboards, mutilated the couch, and ate all of the doorstops. She regularly urinated on the carpet and howled all night long in her cage unless we let her come in and sleep in our bed. As much as we hated to admit it, we started to regret our decision to become dog parents.

One night after Scruffy had ripped up the new flowers we’d just planted in the backyard, my wife and I had a serious discussion regarding what to do about her. “Maybe we should return her to the shelter,” I said.

“Or we could give her away to a family who could take better care of her,” my wife added.

But almost as soon as the words came out of our mouths, we felt guilty and embarrassed. After all, Scruffy was just a puppy doing what puppies typically do. Why were we acting so surprised then? We were treating our dog like she was a nuisance and an inconvenience instead of recognizing that she was a puppy who simply needed our help to learn and feel loved. We were being selfish as opposed to selfless, which we realized was the true source of our regret about Scruffy.

The conversation ended with a mutual resolve to put our self-interest aside and make a more concerted effort to focus on Scruffy’s needs. We started by taking her to obedience classes at the local pet shop and by working harder at getting her house trained. We took her on walks more often and bought her a doggy bed that we permanently put in our room. From that point on, we had no more regrets about our decision to get a dog or the decision to keep her. By being a little more selfless and patient, we were able to love and care for Scruffy for the entire fourteen years she was with us, even when she got sick at the end. The day we had to put her down—which was one of the saddest days of my life—I knew that we were thinking of what she needed at that point, which was to be free from pain. I will never forget holding Scruffy in my arms until she took her last breath and was finally at peace.

Strive to be selfless by putting your self-interest aside so that you can better understand and focus on the interests of others. Beyond taking care of a pet, this applies to raising a child, playing on a team, being a partner in a relationship, working in an organization, and being a good friend. To avoid the regret of being selfish, self-absorbed, and self-serving, consider others’ needs as well as your own. Shift your focus outward instead of inward. When you strive to be selfless, you don’t think less of yourself, you just think about yourself less.

Strive to be selfless—
don’t think less
of yourself, just think
about yourself less.

∼ With whom in your life would you like to be more selfless?

∼ What are some steps you can take to do this?