Selfish/less

I've written before that shyness is a form of selfishness. Since shyness is sad (I mean, I feel worse when I feel shy), that seems to mean that selfishness leads to sadness.

But how about this. In a selfish mood, I think about how things and people add to my life. What do I get from all the things I do? That's a positive way of thinking, because it seems like everything adds something - or if it doesn't, you can just decide not to do it. And when I'm thinking 'selflessly', i.e. when I'm considering what other people think, or trying to think from their point of view, that's when things start to go wrong, and get sad, because I think "do they like me as much as I like them," or "what do they think of me, or of this thing I did?"

I suppose you could say there's a certain selfishness even in that supposed 'selfless' outlook - it's still directed towards 'I', just from a different perspective. Maybe the positive outlook I'm talking about really is exactly that, an outlook: it lives right inside the 'I', so it's actually directed outwards at everything else. Inside the tent pissing out. But it is still self-centred, sort of solipsistic even.

Maybe the upshot is that selfishness (and selflessness) just aren't good ways to think about the world, especially about relationships with other people. I guess that's something that I should already know (wasn't the dichotomy already deconstructed by the idea that 'pure altruism doesn't exist'?). But I've been used to thinking about things, often, in these kinds of terms. What will my thinking be like if I try to stop? What basis can I use instead to think about relationships and obligations and my happiness?

Could the solution be sort of 'utilitarian' - aim for the increase of the total sum of happiness, including both your own and others', indiscriminately? Trying to work out what makes others happy is so hard. But does that mean we should just fall back on making ourselves happy, and let others fend for themselves? Surely not, although I feel like I've heard that point made, in not so many words, before.

Does the satisfaction of love come from resolving this fundamental difficulty? Knowing what makes somebody else happy, and being able to fulfil that, and making yourself happy in doing so. Sounds like a good set-up. Except, I guess, it never quite works like that - or, not for long, anyway.