As we speak this week about ‘Selfless’, let us look at the episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S that aired in October 1998 (Season 5, Episode 4 titled, “The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS”). Joey and Phoebe are interacting at Monica’s apartment, where Joey announces that he is co-hosting a show (but is actually just one of many phone operators on screen, which he later realises), and that he’s doing a good deed for PBS plus getting some TV exposure, and that’s the math that he likes. But Phoebe expresses her disliking towards PBS with her own peculiar reasons and implies that PBS is mean and selfish. To which Joey states that he was looking for doing some good deed, like Pheobe who volunteered for being a surrogate mother to help her brother and his girlfriend to have their triplets!
Pheobe cries that whatever Joey is doing is a selfish act as he gets to be on TV and that makes him feel good. Joey retorts to this by implying that there is no such thing as a selfless act. Each act of selflessness makes one feel good, and an urge to do a selfless act to feel good makes one selfish, he says. Later, through the episode, Phoebe is trying to find one selfless, good deed and fails each time that makes her feel good. She’s worried to raise her children in a world where Joey is right.
Joey retorts… …implying that there is no such thing as a selfless act. Each act of selflessness makes one feel good, and an urge to do a selfless act to feel good makes one selfish…
As Hugh Grant in an interview in 2016 with Peter Marks for The Washington Post said, “It’s very true that you can be both selfless and selfish at the same time. What we tend towards, particularly in filmmaking, is this binary sort of, this is a good guy, this is a bad guy. And I quite like the fact that life is a bit more complex than that.” And, it was quite reflective and philosophical of him to acknowledge the complexity that life brings. Indeed, it’s quite true!
The act of being selfless is where one is being ‘self’ ‘less’. The ‘self’ here is our ego, our identity. To experience moments without this identity is losing oneself in the moment, and that indeed is being selfless.
The act of being selfless is where one is being ‘self’ ‘less’. The ‘self’ here is our ego, our identity. To experience moments without this identity is losing oneself in the moment, and that indeed is being selfless. It certainly does bring an inner content, calmness within and therefore a great sense of joy. But this joy isn’t a materialistic gain or compounding of our ego – unless until at least it’s not let to get into our heads! This sense of contentment is very innate, experiential and personal. There is an experience of losing oneself in this, an experience of emptiness.
Cover Image Source: F.R.I.E.N.D.S (NBC)
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