What is an ouroboros?

How can you prioritize what you want without being Selfish?

The other night, my wife and I were sitting on the couch talking about the concept of selfishness (as one does). She suggested I write a newsletter about it, and I was like, I can’t write about selfishness, that question is an ouroboros.

What did you say? she asked.

That question is an ouroboros, I said.

You should write about that, she said.

An ouroboros is a depiction of a snake eating its own tail.

As a kid, I remember believing in Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, etcetera. I adhered to a system of moral absolutism. I was a Kantian, I guess. I was very into this awesome, all-encompassing system. I evaluated most (all?) actions as Good or Bad. I applied this to other people’s actions, sure, but more than anything, I applied it to my own. I had to be Good, or else I was Bad, which was, well… bad.

Being selfish, which was in the Bad category, was an umbrella term that included:

• Being lazy

• Being inconsiderate

• Being ungrateful

Bad, Bad, Bad.

So if I wanted to be Good, I had to be the opposite of all of those things. That would prove that I was Not Selfish, therefore Not Bad, therefore Good. So I needed to be:

• As productive as possible

• As considerate of others as possible

• As grateful as possible

To avoid being lazy, I worked hard. To avoid being inconsiderate, I considered other people's feelings constantly. To avoid being ungrateful, I banished resentment towards anyone I loved, for fear that the feeling might taint my Goodness.

It was hard to live up to these principles 24/7, but being a Good Person is hard, I thought. I felt lonely, but profound. And I preferred it that way, I reasoned; I’d rather be lonely than Bad. I’d rather yearn than disappoint.

Being Good had its rewards. I got very good grades. I was called Nice by peers and teachers. These results suggested that I was in fact Good. But I knew Goodness was a journey, not a destination. One could never rest if one wanted to be Good. I had to pursue Goodness everyday or else it would atrophy like a shriveled muscle.

Despite the external validation, prioritizing avoiding being Bad alienated me from myself. I was last on my list of what to consider when making a decision, and often, I didn’t make it to the end of my list. Any time I had to make a choice, I had to consider (1) what everyone else in that situation wanted, (2) what the ethical thing to do was, and (3) how to cohesively fuse those two answers together. It was easy for my thoughts to become circular, because those questions are hard (if not impossible) to answer.

Sometimes doing what everyone else wanted conflicted with what I thought was ethical. Sometimes what one person wanted conflicted with what another person wanted, so I had to determine a hierarchical system to navigate whose desires should be prioritized. Sometimes I couldn’t tell what everyone wanted, so then I was compelled to think even harder, so that I might figure it out.

Sometimes, someone wanted me to do something, and I considered it ethical, but I didn’t want to do it. For reasons I couldn’t articulate. It just didn’t feel right. I just. Didn’t. Want.

I didn’t know what to do with feelings of want. Want didn’t weigh on the scale of Good and Bad. Being Not Selfish meant prioritizing others above myself — always. My feelings of want wer outside of reason; base; animal; Bad; not to be listened to.

So I didn’t.

I eat my own tail. It feels like nothing.

But I could never really silence my wants entirely, because I often felt them just as deeply as I felt my internalized sense of Right and Wrong. I wondered, how can I possibly prioritize my wants while prioritizing others’ wants? My wants and theirs can’t be equally important; to be a priority means to be the most important thing, not one of the most important things. And so when my wants conflict with others’ wants, I must choose others as the priority because to choose self as the priority is Selfish, which I Cannot Be. So there is no room for my wants in those cases, there is no room, there is no room, the ouroboros rears its head, the ouroboros eats itself.

I read the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan novels sometime after college. The series focuses on two girls in rural southern Italy, Elena and Lila, and all of their community members’ life trajectories over sixty-ish years. Lila possesses talent and charisma; Elena is disciplined and hard-working. Lila embodies passion and impulsivity; Elena embodies restraint and sense.

When I started reading the series, I was like, I’m such an Elena. I loved Elena! Lila made me angry. I wanted Elena to stop being friends with her. I remember feeling very passionate about this, like come on Elena get out of this toxic relationship!!!! I kept reading.

And the strangest thing happened.

I began to love Lila. I still loved Elena, but I loved Lila, too. I loved them both, I felt for them both, I wanted both of them to be happy, I mourned for both.

I thought both were Good.

I removed my tail from my mouth, or maybe Elena Ferrante did.

Mouth empty, jaw unhinged, I see —

My friend Caleb telling me, I never want you to hang out with me out of guilt, and I believe him

Myself sitting on the table in our living room so that Nancy, Alex and Jess could sit on the couch. Nancy asking me, do you want to sit on the couch? Me saying, it’s better for conversation if I sit here, because then we can all see each other. Nancy repeating, do you want to sit on the couch? I think about it, and then I snuggle into the couch

Jess asking me, what do you want to do this weekend and me saying what do you want to do? And she says what do you want to do? My mind goes blank, and then floods with ideas, there are so many things I want to do, there are so many things I want to do!

An ouroboros is a snapshot. In the ouroboros, the artist shows a moment after the snake began eating itself, and before it has reached the end of its body (or really, the beginning of its body).

If the artist were to depict the ouroboros later on, after a few hours or a few years, what would they depict? Has the snake consumed itself? It would still be circular, but folding in on itself, a short-circuited, gagging, stubby thing, a mouth with no tail left to eat. Or maybe the snake has stopped consuming itself, and slithers forward, towards something other than itself.

No, an ouroboros neither consumes itself to completion nor stops consuming itself. To be an ouroboros, it must be in the process of consuming itself, in the shape of a circle. That's what makes it an ouroboros. It consumes and preserves at equal rates.

If one wants to imagine the ouroboros as temporally vaster than a snapshot, then one must imagine the snake's body infinite. That way, the snake can eat itself without destroying itself. The snake can eat and eat and eat and there will always be more snake left to eat. The shape will always be circle; the snake will always be eating; there will always be more to eat.

I can map out all of my actions against a framework of my own making, classifying as Good or Bad. I can weigh what others want against what I want; I can weigh what I think is ethical against what I think isn’t; I can attempt to weight these values so that I can conclusively determine if my chosen action is Selfish or Not Selfish. I can do all this every single time I am choosing what to do, forever. I know what this feels like because I’ve done it. There is always more snake to eat; the shape is always circle.

But I no longer want to. I just don't want to.

And this time, that's enough to matter.

Not everything can be explained. Articulated rationale can only get us so far. Some things you feel in your gut. My gut is where I feel desire, pain, lust, love, and yes, even a sense of justice, sometimes. My gut matters as much as my brain, I remind myself. My gut is my friend, my protector, my love.

I’m more than a series of actions that adhere to or defy a framework that exists only in my mind. I’m more than the ouroboros I draw. I am a body that shivers and animates. I am a personality that some people love to be around. I am a mind that explores endlessly, seeking more than data — seeking pleasure, seeking joy, seeking wisdom, seeking self. I am a soul, an animal, stardust, soil, story.