That’s right, you heard it here first. That Kevin Stover is pretty selfish. I came to that realization the other day while I was driving down the road. Of course, my very first response was to enter into some pretty severe denial. Immediately I rattled off a list of things that should have completely disqualified me from wearing the title of “selfish”. I love to give, I do lots of things for other people, I always try to put other’s needs ahead of my own, I give sacrificially, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

It was at this moment that a passage from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis jumped into my head. In the passage, Lewis explains that all too often we assume that our “normal” behavior is that of goodness, and that our “rare” behavior is that of depravity, when all too often it is exactly the opposite. In other words, we oftentimes behave like rather bad a tennis player who tells himself that he is simply having a “bad day”, but the reality is that his being bad isn’t the exception, but the rule. This is exactly the problem that I tend to have with my selfishness. I assume that my moments of unselfish acts are the norm and that my self-centered ones are the exception. Yesterday I realized that I simply wasn’t having a “bad day”. I am selfish. So, now that I’ve come clean, what about you? Do you have any virtues that might be the exception and not the rule?