“Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity,” (Chapter 5, Big Book)
“It’s marvellous to believe you are the White Knight and that those are the black dragons coming over the hill to destroy all that is good. Later, you discover there are no clearly divided goods and evils. The more I have lived, the more I have realised the best of us are capable of cruelty if we think it’s in a good cause. Even the worst have gentleness, occasionally. People, on the whole, are better than you think. There’s no black and white. Just a pathetic greyness in which everyone is trying to find solutions.” (Laurie Lee, Things I Wish I’d Known At Eighteen, published in Village Christmas)
Sometimes my selfishness looks like selfishness. Sometimes it looks like do-gooding or indignation about a cause.