Theos-Talk Archives (August 1996 Message tl00552)

>  Evil can be seen as the very
>essence of self-centered desire at the expense of the larger GOOD.

I've got something to say about "self-centered desire", namely that at times
it is a very healthy thing. I'm looking at this from the point of view of a
mother.
I'll agree that if there's not enough food in the house, it should go to the
kids before it goes to the mother. In that case, I think the mother
shouldn't have self centered desire. The kids are growing, & have their life
ahead of them, and being hungry feels uncomfortable & sometimes hurts. But
barring such drastic circumstances, if there's a more or less normal family
life, I think the mother should have some self-centered desires, such as
wanting to read a good book undisturbed, going off to a beauty spa for a few
hours, taking a vacation away from the kids, and sometimes away from the
husband too. That kind of self-centered desire adds to the well being of the
entire family, I think, and I consider it more wholesome for everynone
concerned than the contributiions to the family of a mother who spends her
whole life putting her own wishes always in the background, and doing
continually what other members of her family want her to do, without ever
thinking of what she wants to do. To me that's overdoing the principle of
trying to discard self-centered desire, and I consider such a woman a
vampire of herself.

Liesel