Self-centredness
Blinds us
March 23rd 2014
We cannot deny that many people feel affection for one another. But, at the same time, they are so self-centred, they do not see the extent to which they are making one another suffer. This creates dramas, break-ups, even in families.
Take a man whose professional activities take up all his time and energy, as so often happens these days, and who spends his time away from home in meetings, on trips… When he does come home in the evening, he is tired, preoccupied, in a bad mood even, because of the difficulties he has encountered during the course of the day. He just collapses into an armchair and immerses himself in the newspaper, to let his wife know he doesn’t want to be bothered with the problems of the house, the children, and so on. There are all sorts of clear signs that his wife is beginning to tire of this situation and that his children are also suffering. But he doesn’t see a thing: his wife is there, his children are there, his furniture is there, so everything is fine. Until the evening when he comes home and discovers to his amazement that his wife has left and taken the children with her – or left them behind! And he doesn’t understand. It’s a terrible shock, he can’t get over it, he is shattered, and he goes to a psychoanalyst, or he consults clairvoyants to find out whether his wife will come back! For years it should have been obvious what was likely to happen, but his self-centredness made him blind.