The most helpful creatives among us know this truth by painful experience: Our selfishness never helps us. It, in fact, has the opposite effect. When individual rights seem suspended, the idea of the “greater good” takes a back seat. For my Christian friends and family, the ethic of taking care of your neighbor divides our churches and our homes. Wearing a mask has become a violation of rights to some rather than a symbol or method of safety. Closing businesses upends livelihoods and shatters dreams. Disrupted worship services keep us away from the fuel of our faith and fellowship of our friends. We don’t walk this life alone, and this pandemic keeps us alone. Selfishness is a powerful tempter. And, at the moment, we are vulnerable to its seduction.
My feelings are important, but how about the health of my loved ones?
In LA County, our health officer’s life has been threatened, and the government is seen as the true enemy. It seems odd to hear someone actually blame losses on the COVID-19 virus. We feel the anger and intrusion potently. With this, we see some protest wearing masks and defy orders from the government regarding their businesses. Our government has indeed failed us at all levels, to some degree. But, it is also true that we’d rather blame them than see ourselves as part of the problem and the solution in this crisis. Shoppers blocked by maskless protesters from buying groceries have to also listen to their defying cries that claim this violation of their rights. Well, it is a fact. We have lost some of our rights, albeit temporarily and legally. But, selfishness teaches us that this offense is worse than my risking my neighbors’ or workers’ health at the local Target.
Selfishness allows us to feel some remorse but demands we repair our shame on our own terms. We lost 4,327 to COVID on Tuesday–the largest number of deaths reported to date. People in the business of making body bags cannot meet orders. Refrigerated trucks are deployed to handle the overflow from over-capacity funeral homes to local morgues. An article in the LA Times today reported how many young people apologize for bringing the virus home. These apologies are the last words heard in the ears of their family members as they die in isolation. Even such an apology is selfishness. Absolution, after all, is what these young people desire. It will forever haunt them.
The mask issue shows that selfishness destroys while creating heals.
How do we creatives and leaders balance our tendency to focus on ourselves? The best songs written seem to sing for me things I couldn’t express with my own words. As an artist, we value our self-expression for this reason. This is not always due to selfishness, however. It has been proven in research that expressing our trauma is healing. This is the creative artist’s pattern: Use the pain in your life to honestly feel your humanity, which in turn is our gift. Yes, our gift is for those that enjoy our songs, our paintings, or our words, to feel their humanity as well. For this reason, self-expression is not selfish.
Express yourself! In fact, being self-serving is not being selfish at all. Standing up and expressing your emotion should not invite others to heap judgment on you. There are limits, however. Unlike a song or even a protest in a park, refusing to wear a mask misses the mark. You see, selfishness is delusional. It is dishonest. It hyperbolically exaggerates our presumed victimhood in order to gain attention. The lie is that attention heals us when, in reality, creating something does. Real art makes something. Selfish art destroys something. Why? It’s based on a lie.
There’s a fine line between self-expression and selfishness.
So, while we appreciate the creativity of the man in face paint wearing animal pelts “protesting” at the U.S. Capitol this past week, we see vapid selfishness at work. Destruction is the prooftext of selfish behavior. It destroys property, relationships, and even potentially…democracies. Artists protest by creating from the honest, truthful, and dark corners of ourselves and society. Something new. Something true. Something from me, but bigger than me. We heal, even when we disrupt and offend. In fact, offending people is the pastime of great artists. We have a voice, in other words. With that voice, we must also have ethics. There is a fine line drawn here: will we create out of truth or destroy out of selfishness.