The Illusion of Selfless Love
People are people, and they will always disappoint you. Sooner or later, they will find a way to do so. There are no exceptions. You will be disappointed by your parents, your partners, your children, and almost everyone else you encounter in life.
That disappointment will hurt. It will force you to reassess your understanding of the world. Every such experience will trigger a sense of hopelessness within you, making you question whether there is anyone out there with whom you can truly be happy, someone you can rely on as a pillar of hope.
No matter what people say or how they want you to perceive them, everyone ultimately looks out for themselves. Sometimes, it appears selfless because your well-being is intertwined with theirs. Your progress brings them joy, and your accomplishments give them a sense of fulfilment. In such moments, you begin to believe that what you are witnessing is selfless love.
But perhaps no such thing exists in this world. A parent takes joy in a child's accomplishments because of what those accomplishments mean to them. They offer validation and, perhaps, closure for the life they never got to live. That is why conflict arises the moment your aspirations diverge from their vision for you. What begins as a disagreement can eventually turn into bitterness. It is in these moments that their underlying motivations become apparent.
A friend rooting for you sounds beautiful, even natural. But perhaps he simply doesn't care enough about what you believe in for your success to threaten his own ambitions. Alternatively, he may be adept at concealing his envy, making you believe that he is genuinely happy for you. Either way, certain circumstances will eventually reveal what lies beneath the surface, and that revelation will inevitably lead to disappointment.
The only way to navigate such a seemingly hopeless reality is to understand people's incentives. Don't share your progress with someone whose ambitions directly compete with yours. It will only invite envy. Remain modest. Share only those achievements that have little bearing on their own lives. I share my writing journey with my friends, even though I know they don't particularly care about it. That is precisely why I find satisfaction in sharing it. I am far more restrained when it comes to other aspects of my life.
You should always pay attention to people's incentives, their expectations of life, and what they ultimately hope to achieve. These will tell you a great deal about the decisions they are likely to make in different circumstances. Once you begin to understand this, you may feel as though you've discovered the ultimate hack to navigating life.
We feel deeply hurt because we focus so intently on what we want from others that we forget they, too, want something from life. There is something profoundly nihilistic about this realisation, yet it can also be liberating and motivating. There is a strange freedom in accepting that nobody cares about you as much as you would like to believe. People are, first and foremost, concerned with their own lives. And perhaps there are no exceptions to this.