Selfishness, or Leaving Something Behind?

 Selfishness, or Leaving Something Behind?

From time to time, I find myself asking a slightly uncomfortable question: Am I being selfish?

I am always writing something. A book, an essay, sometimes a poem. Before I have finished one subject, another has already begun to take shape in my mind. I read, think, make notes, rewrite. At times, I realize that I hardly leave myself enough time even to rest.

But that is not really the question that troubles me most.

There is another one, and perhaps it matters more: Am I giving enough time and attention to my friends, my family, and the people I care about?

After all, a life cannot be measured only by what we produce. Friendships, conversations, shared meals, and time spent together have a value of their own. A book may still be sitting on a shelf many years from now. But the chance for a postponed visit, an unspoken word, or an affection left unexpressed may never come again.

That is why I occasionally stop and ask myself whether my urge to write has become a form of selfishness.

Do I make money from what I write? No. Much of it brings me no financial return at all, and money has never been the main reason I write.

Am I trying to build a new career or gain some new position? No. A large part of my professional life is already behind me. I am not chasing another title, office, or rung on the career ladder.

Does the difficult situation in my country play a part in all this? Yes, very much so.

More than fifteen years ago, one of the reasons I began writing more seriously was that simply watching what was happening around me no longer felt sufficient. I wanted to understand it, make sense of it, sometimes object to it, and sometimes look to the past in order to understand the present more clearly.

That reason still remains.

But there is another side to writing that I should not hide from myself. At times, writing also gives me a way to step back from the sadness and noise of the present. It becomes a small refuge, perhaps even a kind of voluntary retreat. The louder the outside world becomes, the more I find myself drawn toward books, history, ideas, and writing.

So writing does two seemingly opposite things for me: it brings me closer to the world, and at the same time allows me to withdraw from it a little. Perhaps these are not really contradictions. Perhaps they are two sides of the same need.

Do I want to be better known?

Here I cannot honestly say no.

Is it not natural to want our writing to be read? Who publishes an idea and then sincerely hopes that no one will notice it?

This is where I often think of Aristotle’s idea of megalopsychia, or greatness of soul. For Aristotle, the virtuous person does not simply reject honor. What matters is not chasing recognition for its own sake, but trying to be worthy of it.

That distinction matters to me.

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized. The problem begins when recognition becomes more important than the work itself, when value is measured by applause, and when the desire to be seen overtakes the desire to say something worthwhile.

So perhaps the real question is not, “Do I want recognition?”

It is this: Do I write in order to be recognized, or do I want my writing to be recognized because I believe it has something worthwhile to offer?

The two questions may look similar, but they are not the same.

Then comes a deeper question: Is there, beneath all this effort, a genuine wish to contribute something, however small, to the accumulated experience and knowledge of humanity?

I believe there is.

But another question follows immediately: How honest am I being with myself?

I know that somewhere in me there is also a wish not to disappear entirely into oblivion. I like the idea that something I have written might still be read after I am gone, that one of my thoughts might continue to live somewhere, or that a person I will never meet may stop over one of my sentences years from now.

To deny that would not be honest.

Human beings know that they are mortal. Perhaps writing is one of the oldest answers we have given to that knowledge. We know that our physical existence is temporary, but we hope that a thought, a sentence, or a work may outlive us.

In that sense, every book is a small message sent forward into time:

“I was here too. I thought. I asked questions. I tried to understand.”

Psychologist Erik Erikson used the term generativity for something close to this. In mature adulthood, people often begin to think beyond themselves and ask what they will leave to those who come after them. Raising children, teaching, creating, passing on knowledge, making something that endures, and contributing to society are all forms of this impulse.

Seen in that light, the desire to leave something behind is not necessarily vanity or self-importance. It may simply be one of the ways we try to make our lives reach beyond our own boundaries.

Still, we are very good at deceiving ourselves.

The sentence “I am contributing to society” can easily become a noble-sounding cover for personal ambition. That is why questioning our motives matters.

Nietzsche raises an uncomfortable but useful possibility here. He suggests that behind human action there is often a drive to assert ourselves, expand our strength, overcome our limits, and leave some kind of mark on the world.

I do not dismiss that idea completely.

Perhaps the desire to write really does contain a wish to go beyond oneself, to extend one’s presence, and to resist the passing of time. But that does not have to mean seeking power over other people.

What I want is not power over anyone else.

What I want, rather, is to know whether an idea of mine can have value independently of me. Perhaps the real test of an idea is whether it still stands once people have forgotten who first expressed it.

That is where the phrase “leaving a mark or a trace” takes on a different meaning for me.

Leaving a mark does not necessarily mean making your name known to as many people as possible. Helping another person think differently is also a way of leaving a mark.

If something I write leads a young person to ask a new question, encourages a reader to look at the world from a different angle, carries an experience forward to another generation, or leaves behind a small warning that helps prevent an old mistake from being repeated, then that too is a mark.

Sometimes it may be even simpler than that. Perhaps someone reads a sentence and says, “I have felt this too, but I never knew how to put it into words.”

That matters as well.

And perhaps the most meaningful marks are often left by people whose names we never learn.

Which brings me to another difficult question:

Do I want to leave a mark, or do I want my name written on the mark?

It is not easy to separate the two. Perhaps this is exactly where honesty with oneself begins.

There is also another danger I do not want to overlook: trying so hard to leave something for the future that I neglect the people who are part of my present.

What would it mean to write for readers I may never meet, while failing to listen carefully enough to the friends sitting beside me today?

That is the point at which a passion for creating can truly become selfish.

The desire to contribute to humanity can never be an excuse for overlooking the human beings closest to us.

Perhaps the answer lies in balance.

On one side: thinking, creating, writing, leaving something behind.

On the other: living, sharing, listening, making time for friendship.

I do not believe we have to sacrifice one for the other.

In the end, this is where I find myself: the desire to leave something behind and the wish to contribute to others do not have to be opposites. In fact, they may often come from the same place.

The desire to leave a mark may keep the urge to create alive. The desire to contribute may prevent that mark from becoming merely a monument to oneself and instead give it meaning for others.

Perhaps the line between selfishness and selflessness does not depend on whether our motives are completely pure. Human beings are more complicated than that.

The same act can contain something for ourselves and something for others at the same time.

What matters is understanding which one is leading the other.

I will continue to write.

But every now and then, I also want to put down my pen and ask myself:

Does what I write truly contribute something, or am I simply amplifying my own voice?

And perhaps there is an even more important question:

While I am trying to leave something behind for the future, am I leaving enough of a mark on the lives of the people walking beside me today?

For me, I think that is the real measure.

Osman Karadağ, September 26, 2026