Self-Absorbed Population

I was walking around the mall the other day when I saw someone wearing a t-shirt with the words "There's only one ME" imprinted on it. I had to laugh because, it seems to me that that t-shirt pretty adequately summed up the current self-absorbed mentality of the majority of the world's population. Of course there's only one "ME"! But that's because of the subjectivity of the word. One can only describe oneself as "Me"; to each there is but one person they can refer to as "Me", that is, themselves. "You"'s however, are plentiful. In fact, eveyone is a "You" to all except himself.

When you percieve something to be rare, you instinctively attach a higher value to it. In today's society, especially among the more affluent, there seems to be a continuous fear of producing individuals who, god forbid, should not think the world centers around them! Children are encouraged to grow up believing that they are unique, special and ENTITLED to only the best in life. Don't get me wrong, every child is precious and most certainly should be reared in a loving, supporting family where he or she is encouraged to be all that he can be. However, in line with what we discussed earlier, a lot of children grow up these days believing themselves to be a rare commodity, and believing that this "ME" is more important than all of the "YOU"'s put together. Herein lies our problem, I believe.

If society insists on continuously producing individuals who truly believe that the world owes them something merely for being this unique, one-of-a-kind person, then we will end up with a population who act only for their own maximum benefit without a thought for others. This, I fear, is already the case. It is important to feed your child's self-esteem, but do not do so to a point where 'empathy' ceases to be a part of his vocabulary.

The sooner we realise that the difference between "Me" and "You" is merely a matter of perception, the sooner we may be able to fix some of the ever-growing problems of our society. Let us stop for a moment and think of all the "You"'s out there, because after all, "I" am a "You" to everyone else.