The way I personally think about the line between denial and self-sacrifice is to recognize that I'm a person too. I also deserve the safety and happiness that I ache to provide for others, and I'm just as much a part of the system as they are. I try to think of myself as a single cell in the massively complex organism that is human society. If I burn out and die it helps no one. I have to maintain my own life if I want to keep helping and steering the direction we're moving in. And when I honestly evaluate what I have the power to change in my own life, I have the most absolute power over myself - far more influence than I have even over people who are very close to me.
It's not a moral question of selfishness vs. self-sacrifice as much as it is simply practical and accurate to factor my own interests into my aspirations to help the world. It'd be beautiful if I had no needs or desires or feelings or weaknesses or limitations and I could disappear into service for others, but I wouldn't be a human being anymore. I'd be a god. And I won't make plans that rely on some hubris of me being divine when staring at a human world that is anything but. Everything is shit, and I'm in the shit too.
The way I personally think about the line between denial and self-sacrifice is to recognize that I'm a person too. I also deserve the safety and happiness that I ache to provide for others, and I'm just as much a part of the system as they are. I try to think of myself as a single cell in the massively complex organism that is human society. If I burn out and die it helps no one. I have to maintain my own life if I want to keep helping and steering the direction we're moving in. And when I honestly evaluate what I have the power to change in my own life, I have the most absolute power over myself - far more influence than I have even over people who are very close to me.
It's not a moral question of selfishness vs. self-sacrifice as much as it is simply practical and accurate to factor my own interests into my aspirations to help the world. It'd be beautiful if I had no needs or desires or feelings or weaknesses or limitations and I could disappear into service for others, but I wouldn't be a human being anymore. I'd be a god. And I won't make plans that rely on some hubris of me being divine when staring at a human world that is anything but. Everything is shit, and I'm in the shit too.