SELFISHNESS, UNIVERSAL EMPATHY, AND YOUR 20’S Is it Actually Bad to Be Selfish? written by Melissa Boberg | photographed by Chika Okoye | designed by Emily Snisarenko
I am not a statistician, but I would bet that you’d be hard-pressed to find any college student who has not heard the cliche that “college is the best four years of your life.” Even though this advice seems easily ignorable given the relative circumstances of individual life, it is still indicative of how people, especially of older generations, view the late-teenage-to-early-twenties phase of life. Connected to this is another cliche common in cultural discourse: “Your twenties is your time to be selfish.” Naturally, this leads to the conclusion that being in college and/or being in your twenties is supposed to be the time of your life—because you are given the freedom with which to be selfish. My question then becomes: if being selfish yields such positive
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results on our personal well-being, why should we ever stop being selfish? Primarily, it is worth delving into what is meant by the advice that your twenties are about selfishness. I find this to be good-natured and genuinely helpful advice, which can be applied to concepts like relationships and exploration of passions. You should explore your passions and put yourself first, without changing your plans for the maintenance of a relationship or the benefit of another person. (See: Topanga not going to Yale because of Cory.) However, there is an expiration date on this—and there comes a point at which you are supposed to become more focused on things like financial stability, providing for others, et cetera. Also, this “expiration date” is
wildly inconsistent; some people are born into or placed into circumstances where this period of selfishness is never granted, while others are given the chance to think exclusively about themselves for the entirety of their lives. (See: Donald Trump.) In a way which is both hypocritical and not shocking, there are a lot of factors which play into whether or not it is permissible for a person outside of their twenties (or even oftentimes in/before their twenties) to behave selfishly. For example, stories like Wolf of Wall Street are held (by some) to an iconic status, for their depictions of ruthless economic pursuit. So, being selfish is taboo for some people, whereas others are celebrated for being selfish not only in a sense of self-
