Starting with the Man in the Mirror

I'm reading the book Blue Like Jazz and the author writes about the selfish nature of all mankind. He really does have a point when he talks about almost every action being self-centered. He shared a poem by C.S. Lewis that got me thinking-


All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am a mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want you, God, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always, end where I begin.


Sometimes I feel like I know all the right things to say and do, but there's not much passion behing any of it. Ever since I read Wild at Heart a few years back, I have done my best to live according to a Latin phrase "Esse Quam Videri" which means "to be, and not to seem." That to me is true character and faultless integrity. A man who is the same no matter who is watching him- that's a man after Gods heart.