Somewhere in the middle of my column today, I discuss Michelle Obama, and the views she expressed in a magazine called Prevention. There has been some mail on this subject, and I publish one letter, because it is rather beautiful, and beautifully expressed. By publishing it, I do not mean some condemnation of the First Lady or anyone else. Really. (“Honest Injun,” as WFB once wrote.) It’s just that the letter is, in fact, rather beautiful:

Jay,
It was with sad acceptance that I read your passages . . . I say acceptance because I have seen all too often that [a priority on self] is the way all too many people feel they must live their lives. I am sad about it because this attitude is so determinedly self-defeating. Here’s the seemingly contradictory truth about being human: You can get anything you want by helping other people get what they want. True joy is found only in serving others, not in serving yourself.
I’m a fairly successful man in his forties with a wife and two kids. I am steady, calm, and blissfully happy in my life. I know what I’ve got going for me; sometimes I revel in it. I’m a good father and a good husband, if I say so myself. However, in order to be those things, I had to realize that it’s not about me. It’s about them. As I live my life for them, the rewards that I get back far outstrip the minimal, immediate cost to me.
Living your life for yourself is like squeezing a handful of sand: The harder you clench, the faster it slips through your fingers, leaving you with nothing. But if you open your hand up flat, you can hold that sand all day.
This is a fundamental human truth that our current social structure is working hard to deny. Everyone’s working for self-actualization, self-gratification, and self-realization, when all one needs to do is step back and take the focus off self, putting it on others. Do that, and the rest falls into place. Amazing, innit?

That may recall to your mind “Seek ye first” — but that’s “a whole ’nother subject,” as we used to say in my family.

Look, there are 50 billion things to say on this general theme. You could say that, if you don’t have yourself together, you are in no position to serve others. And then there are the other 50-billion-minus-one things to say. I am not going to re-address this subject, here today, but I thought I’d publish one letter, and I thank our readers for the rest.

And I thank anyone who might be tempted to take offense at the foregoing for not doing so!

P.S. I might mention that, in my column today, I take a little preemptive action. I figured people might write in to say, “Do you know the expression, ‘If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy’?” And I assure one and all: I do indeed! That can be an extraordinarily useful expression, in an extraordinary number of households.