On Self:

I'm going to take a risk and say that Self is that which one most 'instinctively' (not necessarily by nature, but in terms of tendency) protects. If you do not have an instinct to protect your body, soul or being, you are selfless. Perhaps you would protect someone else. A husband, a cat. Then that other is your Self and you are living psychologically from them. In honour of them. They are not separate from you, and their decisions and actions are the most important in your life.

But what about children? Isn't some of this extra-auto protection necessary when it comes to guarding the little ones? Yes. I'm trying to find the person who said that "To have children is to accept that your heart will walk around permanently outside your body." This selflessness is necessary and carries an evolutionary advantage.

There are, however, limits to this attachment. Children grow up. They have their own lives and, from a young age, their own will. Parents must be able to accept and live within the paradox that their children are both theirs and not theirs at all. Not to do so is to become either cold and detached or smothering and enmeshed.

And the airlines always tell you to put on your oxygen mask first.