Happiness is loving yourself. Love is loving yourself through others*. What haunts us till our death is our narcissistic instincts. Most of our attempts at self-expression are derived from the image our ego constructs. Every "self-less" deed we enact is tainted with our need to be recognized by an other as 'good' and our hopes that it would be reflected into our self-perception and which would only feed into our selfishness. How can we convince ourselves that we can break out of it? How can we acquire a satisfaction from helping others without the narcissistic self gratification that we will always seek. Would this be found in helping the dead who is not in a conscious state of recognition? The fact that we seek something out of the deed... as little as a feeling, makes it inevitably selfish. Is breaking out of it ever a possibility? Humans will always be damned by their consciences, whether good or bad.
* Lacan and Freud through Lacan, respectively.
Song I'm listening to:
My Girls - Animal Collective
Book I'm reading: House of Biswas by V.S Naipaul