Selfless love

Is there anything called selfless love? CAn you love anyone without expecting anything back but love. The most sacred love in this world is told to be the love of a mom towards her child. IS that also selfless?While you analyse it meticulously you can see that a mom may not complain even when you neglect her or don't love her as your boyfriend or girlfriend does.But it doesn't mean that she never expects love in return.Let us look at the same issue from a different angle. If her child was not hers or putting it in simple words can she love some other child as she does her own child. I think its almost impossible though we used to boast like all mothers only know to love kids but their own. ofcourse there are exceptions.But very very rare. Then there is another thing called sympathy. Most of the times people mistake sympathy for love. Sympathy comes out of your humanity. Its a concern for another living creature.You can never count it as love.In that case you don't expect anything back, anything at all.I strongly feel that you can't love anyone without a small trace of love back if not anything else.If anyone who can counterargue with me always welcome.Because I seriously want to know it.

There was an article in Hindu a few days before with headline as Selfishness and Altruism. In the article a research study based on two well known ship wreckages which happend within a gap of three years or so, with one ship being Titanic, says that in case of titanic disaster the majority who survived it was women and children whereas in the other case it was a minority. The study points that in case of titanic everyone was aware that a disater is ahead long time before it actually happened but in the other case it happened as an unexpected one. In the case of titanic people had the time to think about moral values and ethics but in other one the basic instinct, to help themselves, played a major role. So does it show that at the end of the day all of us are selfish?