Szigetkék

„I want what’s best for him, I really do. But I also want him for myself. I want to be what’s best for him. Am I just being selfish?”

I don’t think he is... That's just how it is with love. I mean, with the real one.

One day, when I was about 8 years old, guilt-ridden by everything that was supposed to be good for me, that I was supposed to enjoy; a threatened and abused soul questioning everything about myself, I was on my way home from school and thinking - about myself, about life and what I had experienced, as usual -, and just before turning at the corner of our street, I had an epiphany. It is as clear now as it was at the moment of realisation. That day our teacher had been reading out Szigetkék by Magda Szabó in class, and although I was only a 2^nd grader, I was deeply touched by the story. Exceptional emotional intelligence, they say. And I understood something, making a mental note about it – one of the numerous other ones to come later.

It says: “If I accept love, I cannot be called selfish since when I offer my love to another person who takes it and enjoys it, I never think he or she is being selfish. I just feel it right – because it is right. Oddly, however, when I accept anything that would make me happy, I feel guilty – as I am made to believe that I have to, while in reality, my “not accepting the love given to me out of guilt of enjoying myself, which I have no right to do” might actually offend the other person and make them sad, so my as asceticism will not be virtuous and respectful at all. It will hurt. A lot.

It is exactly the opposite: my enjoying and embracing their love towards me that does make the other person happy, which means that taking what is given to us in a mutual fashion is not selfish at all. It is just natural. It is how things work.”

Thus, wanting to become the best for someone who is the best for me is not selfish, either. It might not always happen, however much we want it, but this is the only way a relationship is worth having. You cannot make someone happy by giving up on yourself, on your desire to be made happy by him/her, feeling badly in order to make the other person feel fine. There is no such thing – unhappiness breeds unhappiness, self-denial breeds a sense of loss, tragedy and irreparability in everyone involved.

By definition, happiness may only be brought about by mutually fulfilling love. Which means that both of you are supposed to be uplifted and enhanced by the experience.

If you truly care about someone who makes you happy and you want to make them happy, it is natural to want to be the best for them. And one day, you will find the person with whom you are the best for each other.