Who Do You Sing (Insert Your Word Here) For: Yourself or Others?

In a day where people are crazy to achieve success, prominence, glory and fame, questions arise as to whether people still sing for themselves. So here is my question: Do you sing (insert your word here) for yourself or do you tend to sing (insert your word here) for others?

This question can be pregnant with meaning if you take it in such a way. What I mean by the question is this: Do you genuinely sing for yourself and your own self enjoyment or do you sing as if you were granting someone else a sense of self enjoyment for yourself?

Dig deep on this one. It is a tough question that can take some serious consideration. I think I fall victim to the latter part of the question all the time, and it is quite a shame. I truly do love to sing, but sometimes I think that I sing only in a manner as if to please someone else for my own gain. You feel?

The best way that I can put it is that we are trying to sing (or whatever else we may do) vicariously through our own imaginatively placed enjoyment. We tend to place emotions on the people that we sing for in order to receive some type of instant gratification for ourselves. It's funny how we like to say that we sing for ourselves, but most of the time we sing for others. And yet when we sing for others, we do it for the gratification of ourselves. We as people are more fickle than we think.

So how do you truly sing for yourself without using others (either figuratively or literally)? That is an excellent question to which I am not entirely sure of the answer. I think many people would like to take stabs at providing educational answers, but if we truly reflect on our nature, it is hard to make such a gesture with a clean conscience.

This also begs the opposite side of the question: How do we truly sing for someone else without using them for our own gain (either figuratively or literally)? The flip side of the previous question is just as sticky as the question at hand. Once again, if we truly reflect on our nature, we find that many times we sing for others so that we can receive approval from others. It's not that we are singing for others - we tend to sing for the glory that we can absorb from others.

Have you ever taken time to consider this type of question? Because I love singing, I try to look at it from all different angles and perspectives. But this type of logic and thinking doesn't stop at singing - it could be anything. Let's get uncomfortable: do you write for yourself or others? Do you write so that you can truly help others or so that you can pine for their views to get some extra cash?

Our self-centeredness runs deep. I'll be the first to openly admit that I'm way too selfish. Too often I sing for the glory of myself at the expense of others.

So I come back to this question: Who do you (insert your word here) for: yourself or others? I'd like to hear what you would have to say in response!

Forever Singing