Love thy neighbours as thyself

''Every man for himself'' is often being perceived as a selfish behaviour but it is not necessarily wrong. In fact, it's the starting point if we want to live a life of serving others. We have to learn to take good care of ourselves first before even thinking of taking care of others. As we might have heard the famous saying ''Love thy neighbours as thyself''. It goes to demonstrate that we have to love ourselves first before learning to love our neighbours.

The selfish behaviour surfaces when one starts and ends at the starting point of "Every man for himself". When we do that, we are always living within our personal confines and not making any outward progress in our lives. We tend to become very self-focussed and self-centred. We do not see beyond ourselves and beyond our own needs. We are busy for ourselves, at most our immediate family. We do not bother about anything else beyond that.

We all live in a community and society, not in isolation. We have to learn to integrate ourselves into the community and society and the best way to do that is to make contributions to the community and society in any way we are good at or familiar with. Learn to bless others for it is by blessing others that we could be blessed.

There is an instruction that is often heard on board all passenger planes, as part of the in-flight safety message, i.e "Put on your mask first". This literally means "Take care of yourself first before taking care of others". Quoted below is part of the message transcribed by someone on board Alaska Flight 438 to San Francisco. It sounds funny though...

"In the event of a loss of cabin pressure these baggy things will drop down over your head. You stick it over your nose and mouth like the flight attendant is doing now. The bag won't inflate, but there's oxygen there, I promise. If you are sitting next to a small child, or someone who is acting like a small child, please do us all a favour and put on your mask first. If you are travelling with two or more children, please take a moment now to decide which one is your favourite. Help that one first, and then work your way down."