I’m just not sure any longer.  Or maybe I really am.

My confidence used to be higher when I was older.  Now that I am younger, though actually feeling older, I find that it is on the wane.  Surely this is not the way it was supposed to be was it?

There were times when I was older that I always knew just what to do.  It was all clear and hard as a bell tolling on a cold and cloudless winter morn.  Now I merely mill about in search of ways to spend my time before it has completely abandoned me and wasted all of that oldness that was supposed to help me as I got younger.  It ain’t working Jack.

How do you know what is right when you are no longer completely sure of what it is that is wrong?  Everywhere I look more and more people just do- they don’t look much like they care about making sure it is good or right.  What is good or right is no longer of much concern as it has been replaced by what is me and mine.  The kinder we are told to be the more selfish we tend to be.  Good and right?  I couldn’t even tell you absolutely any longer.

Who is more selfish, the young child or the elderly citizen?  That has often been the great debate but maybe it focuses in the wrong places.

When I ask who is more selfish is it not me who is?  Isn’t merely asking the question an indication of an extreme selfishness?  When did I get that way?  And if I was more selfish when I was older and will get more selfish as I get younger doesn’t that mean I have always been selfish and that how much is only a matter of degree?

So there I am and the problem is really me.  It has taken most of my old age to finally figure that out.  It’s not that I wasn’t sure it is really that I just didn’t know and very likely that I didn’t know because I just didn’t want to know.  But now I know.  Surely I must.

I guess I came here today to find something that would again make me sure of the things I had been sure of before I turned so selfish.  What I found was that I have always been selfish, from my old age right on through to my youth and also everywhere in between.

I thought that when I worked to help some of my mates in college that I was being helpful.  Then when I started my first career and worked such long and hard hours I felt as if I was sacrificing for the company I was with at the time or the team that I was on at the same time.  Perhaps when I supplied financial support for my ailing father that was surely a sign of an unselfish person.  And later when I got married and agreed to share my life with another that was certainly a strong indication that I was giving person, willing to give and also willing to give up.  Then when kids came along, well, what parent does not provide total support and sacrifice for their children no matter the cost to himself?

Somewhere along that line I must have gotten it right at least once.  Just once.

But no.  The experts tell me this: the college thing was just to get people to like me; the work thing was just so I could get ahead; the father thing was simply a way to hide my guilt at being so many states away from personal responsibilities as he faded; marriage was only so that I could appear more like a normal person and not some weird bachelor; and having kids and trying to do what is right in taking care of them is just to gain their loyalty for later on when it is I who will need them.

Selfish.  Selfish. Selfish.

So as I grow younger and stay selfish and as my kids grow older and try, unlike me I guess, to not be selfish I am hoping that I will see them in passing and be able to say simply that I am sorry for being so selfish.

And unless my wife grows young with me I had better say it to her now if she is not already out of earshot.

I was always sure that it wasn’t me.  Now I am sure that it always has been.