This Christmas season, it felt as though I couldn’t take my trash out without Charles Dickens popping his head out of the bin and jeering at me about how there’s more to life than money.

It’s all we hear about during the holidays – we need to focus less on ourselves and more on supporting others.

The classic example is “A Christmas Carol,” written by the aforementioned Charles Dickens, where the crotchety, old and greedy Mr. Scrooge is visited by three ghosts who convince him to give to others and to focus less on his career. In short, the ghosts taught him there was more to life than money.

“Selfishness is when you put yourself before anyone else,” said Caitlin Miyahara, a freshman animal science major.

According to this definition, Scrooge would be considered selfish, but that’s not accurate.

There has never been a stranger strawman than “there’s more to life than money,” spoken as if there are people who don’t eat, sleep or breathe and devote all their time and energy to pinching pennies. It’s a moralizing statement that means nothing and seeks only to denigrate people who love their work.

To contrast Dicken’s beliefs, in Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” Henry Reardon, a steel tycoon, is derided by his own mother and brother for caring for nothing but money.

But Reardon loved his work. He devoted his life to laying tracks for railroads, providing the building materials for skyscrapers and allowing for people to have everything from kettles to stoves.

In the novel, he is known for being selfish because all he cared about was his work and people inferred he only lusted for money.

Many of us came to college to expand our career opportunities, hoping to get into higher income brackets and paying it off with some debt and a lot of hard work.

You may have found yourself criticized, perhaps for studying too hard and caring too much about your grades. But as students, isn’t always striving for A’s what we should be doing?

Your college experience is about you and nobody else. You shouldn’t limit yourself because you’re concerned with the happiness of others.

In the end, when you get your degree, you don’t want to look back and think you’ve missed opportunities because of other people.

Don’t allow yourself to fall into the trap of believing someone who devotes their life to their legacy and their work is greedy.

I asked Miyahara to define “greed,” and she said it was pretty much the same as being selfish.

Dictionary.com defines greed as “excessively or inordinately desirous of wealth, profit, etc.”

In short, greed is lust for material wealth.

According to Merriam-Webster, the exact definition of selfishness is “seeking or concentration on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others.”

Selfishness, in contrast to greed, is about seeking happiness.

My advice for this upcoming semester is simple: be selfish. Some will misinterpret this; I do not mean take advantage of others or steal from them. I simply mean live for yourself and nobody else.

One imagines Mr. Scrooge as being the epitome of selfishness, and I disagree. The selfish individual is not the lonely, angry Mr. Scrooge, because the selfish individual is devoted to his or her own happiness.

So this semester, devote yourself to one thing: yourself. Don’t worry if people call you greedy or if they call you self-centered and egotistical, your only responsibility is to one person: you.

Harrison Conner is a junior economics major from Stanwood. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.