In this Diary entry, Anais Nin records a note from Dr. Otto Rank which states that he woke up with a full realization that he has never been human in all his life. He defines being human as acting naturally according to emotions such as cruelty, jealousy, laziness, dependency. Instead, being in the business of helping others instead of hurting others, he has acted with compassion, understanding, and patience. He believes this way of acting is unnatural, not human. The self denial it takes to be good and human is really just a form of self protection based on selfish motives, he feels.
It is often true that human beings suffer and then end up hurting someone else because they've been hurt and have been hardened as a result. Jealousy, anger, rejection gets the best of us and then brings out the worst in us and can grow in to violence. We all want to do our best at whatever we do, and if someone else feels that our best isn't good enough, we may turn on them. This may be based on self protection, but is it selfish as Dr. Rank says? What do you think?
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