My advice to my woman friends, whenever our conversation turns to the compelling topic of how to be happy, and how to spend the rest of our lives in the best possible way is usually straightforward: ‘Be selfish’, and for good measure, I add, ‘Yes, and I mean very selfish.’

Obviously such advice which is contrary to age-old religious and moral admonitions to be kind, generous, giving, selfless, and which clearly subverts most of the Ten Commandments and endorses all the Seven Deadly Sins, has to be quickly qualified and explained.

Actually, it has been deliberately—and playfully—cast in that form, for the shock effect it always has on my listeners. So the first thing I have to do is to strip the word of all its negative connotations, and give it a purely technical, neutral meaning. Hence, ’selfish’ in my context would mean no more than’ having to do with self’, and the advice is no more than a commonsensical one: ‘To be happy, one first of all needs to be aware of one’s own needs as a person, and then go about fulfilling them.’

In its elaborated form, the advice incorporates an indisputable fact about our human nature: that all human beings act from self-interest, just as all forms of animal life are driven by the survival instinct. It is hence a biological imperative. This is so evident in day-to-day life, at every level, from the individual to the community to the nation, that it has become a truism, even if the civilizing influence of culture, especially of religion and morality, prevents direct acknowledgment of it.

Hence to be ’selfish’ simply means to act by our most basic instincts. The surest path to self-conflict, the root of all unhappiness, is to deny this most essential aspect of our nature, or worse, consider it bad and hence suppress it. Heroic, selfless sainthood is only for the exceptional few!

I am thinking in particular of several women friends, in their fifties and sixties, who have throughout the different stages of their lives, been exemplary daughters, wives and mothers and who have made enormous sacrifices for their families. In their mellowing years, when their children are already grown and leading independent lives, they are quietly reviving their long buried dreams to do all those things they never had the time for—travel, go out with friends, take up painting or beadwork, play mahjong, and, in one case, do a degree course in a local university.

But the habit of sacrifice produces its own special feelings of guilt. I am thinking of a friend whose retired husband wants only to stay at home, impatiently dismissing all suggestions of vacations abroad. The long years of wifely dutifulness have resulted in compliance and fear of incurring his displeasure, so there is no question of her going off on her own. ‘He’s used to my cooking,’ she says resignedly, ‘and won’t eat what the maid cooks. I’ll feel bad if he doesn’t eat properly.’

Her daughter, a career woman with three young children, wants her to be around to ’supervise the maid and make sure the children are properly taken care of.’

Whenever she talks to me on the phone, she says wistfully, ‘If only I could go to Canada to visit Julie’ (Julie’s her favourite niece); if only I could go on a cruise, all by myself, if only—’. She often expresses her longing through a Hokkien idiom—’cheow cheng’, literally ’seize happiness’. From futile longing to resentment is but a small step. Sometimes she allows herself a moment of truth, saying with a small twinge of bitterness, ‘I think they’re being very selfish,’ referring to the husband and daughter she has spoilt all her life.

And it is then that I come in to play the role of the instigator, which I do with relish, as I tell her: ‘That’s right. Be selfish. Be assertive for once. ‘Cheow’ all the ‘cheng’ you can before it is too late!’

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...