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Articles

Needs & Wants

Peg Tittle wonders if she can be happy alone without feeling guilty about it.

Quite a while ago, I set myself the philosophical question, ‘Is it wrong to be happy alone?’ My answer, now, would be a glib ‘Surely less wrong than to be unhappy alone’, but I know the problem I was getting at was this: isn’t it selfish to be happy alone – and isn’t it wrong to be selfish?

To that question, I’d say first, it’s important to distinguish between ‘selfish’ and ‘self-interested’. The former entails and goes beyond the latter: selfishness is self-interest at the expense of others.

For example, if it pleases me to live in a cabin on a lake in a forest quite a distance away from the nearest town or highway, and I buy such a place, that no one else even wanted, let alone needed, I’m acting out of self-interest. No one has been disadvantaged by my serving my own desires.

However, if I prefer to keep warm with easy electric baseboard heaters or an oil furnace rather than with the hassle of splitting and carrying firewood and building fires, that’s another story.

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