We are born self-centered, and one of our goals should be to slowly drop our self-centeredness so that by the time we die, we have a healthy balance that we know clearly that we are the center of the OUR world, but that everyone else has an unalienable right to feel the same thing about their world.
Specifically, if you look at children, they actually believe that they are the center of the world. Interestingly, when you play peek-a-boo with a baby, they think you actually disappeared. As children grow up, this slowly dissipates, but if something happens to a child, like someone says something mean, they take it personally, and it impacts their sense of self in a negative way.
However, as we age it is incumbent upon us to realize that in fact, nothing that happens to us is personal, rather, a reflection of the other person’s own private world, and therefore not take affronts to our person personally. Since nothing is personal.
Herein is the mature sense of self that we must strive to adopt as we age. Good luck!
(Similar to yesterday, this post was inspired by the something I learned in a book by Susan Anderson.)