To think of love, usually means to think of love for something that is external to yourself. The love of your partner, parents, family, a pet, a treasured possession, your work (if you are lucky enough), a hobby. All of these involve love that flows from within yourself, outwards. You project the love from your heart and direct it towards its intended recipient. I imagine this as a kaleidoscope of colour that shoots from my heart, arcing like a rainbow, being absorbed by the object of my affection, the air between us filled with an array of dazzling, dancing, colours. But there is another kind of love. A love that is of equal, if not more importance, yet is often overlooked. A love that many people find difficult to comprehend, let alone admit. A love that can make you feel guilty for pursuing. It is simply, the love of self.
I wrote the short story of Anna and the Old Man so that I could highlight the importance of having love of self. Towards the end of the story, the old man tells Anna:-
"You have to discover peace and love from within, then seek it from without. Only when you love yourself, only when you have forgiven yourself, only when you have accepted yourself, can you truly find meaningful love. Until that time, you will try to fill the gaps in your own soul using the love of another. Ultimately, that will never prove to be a successful relationship, since you place a responsibility on the other person for fixing you. And that is an unfair burden for them to carry."
Self love might initially sound like a strange concept. After all, people who put themselves first are often called selfish or self-centred. Self love does not equate to either of these two things. It is actually quite the opposite. Selfishness is a lacking of consideration for others and being self-centred means to care only about yourself and your own needs. Self love means that you love yourself and very importantly, by doing so, you allow yourself to love another person wholly and free of any burden. By loving yourself, you give a gift not only to yourself, but also to your partner. That cannot be the act of a selfish or self-centred person.
A lack of love for yourself produces feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness and these create low self-esteem. Often in life, we feel guilty for giving ourselves treats or doing nice things for ourselves. Think how you felt when you bought yourself a gift, had a dessert with dinner at a restaurant, ate a bar of chocolate or some ice cream, went to the spa for a massage, took yourself to the cinema one afternoon to watch a movie and so on. When we do this, it creates within us feelings of guilt. That guilt is your mind telling you that you do not deserve to treat yourself, that you do not deserve to be happy. So you chide yourself for what you consider to be a moment of weakness. You may catch yourself saying, "Just this once", or "It won't hurt". It is as if there is something fundamentally wrong with being good to yourself, with making yourself happy. There is not. The ultimate sacrifice we make because we do not think ourselves worthy, is to not go in pursuit of our dreams. We deny ourselves our only chance of truly finding lasting happiness and peace.
When you look in the mirror, who is the person that looks back at you? Do you like what you see? I know that for many years, I would look at myself in the mirror and see only a short, fat, ugly kid staring back at me. I possessed zero self-esteem, zero confidence in myself, I felt worthless. I described myself in a poem once as being ugly on the outside and ugly on the inside. I loathed the person I was and I saw no goodness in me. I could not accept myself and I was very unhappy. I did not like myself, let alone love myself. And if I felt all of those negative feelings about myself, what kind of image did I project to the outside world? Why would anyone else love me if I could not love myself? Why would anyone else accept me, if I did not accept myself?
For so long, I continued to make the same mistake over and over. I kept telling myself that I needed someone else to give me the love that I did not possess for myself. I told myself that the love I received from my partner would fix the holes in me and make everything right. In the movie Jerry Maguire, Jerry (Tom Cruise) tells Dorothy (Renée Zellweger) that she completes him. This is often cited as one of the most romantic lines in a movie. And it certainly is a moving scene. Now think about it in this way. The implication is that Jerry has something missing, that he is not a whole person. He needs to obtain something from Dorothy. That actually creates a burden of responsibility on Dorothy, because now Dorothy has become responsible for making Jerry happy. Dorothy is now filling the hole, she is fixing Jerry, just as I thought that the person who loved me would fix me. I'm not unromantic, far from it. It is just that the concept that someone can 'fix you' is not correct. The only person who can fix you, is you. And the only way you can do that, is to accept yourself, forgive yourself and to love yourself.
I came to realise the truth only later, when I began to walk my true path. It was then that I finally became a whole person. It was only when I began to take those initial, fledgling steps along my path, that I finally began to accept myself and to realise that I always had everything that I needed. It always had been inside of me the entire time. Because I felt so low about myself, I had never bothered to look for it properly. At the same time that I began to see the beauty and miracles of nature, so too did I begin to finally accept myself. I'm not conceited enough to proclaim that I am perfect, far from it! I make mistakes just like everyone else, but I always admit to my mistakes so that I can learn from them. I may not be perfect but I too, am a miracle of life and creation. Whenever I look in the mirror now, I see myself for everything that I am and it makes me happy. I'll admit, there are still moments when I see myself as that short, fat, kid they used to call Bombur, and I know that this person will always be an integral part of me, because it was necessary to get me to where I am now. Now, I accept myself for who I am.
Acceptance of self is a necessary step towards loving yourself. You have to accept everything about yourself. If you are able to change something that you do not accept about yourself, then take the courage and change it. Become the person that you want to be. Live your life in tune with your heart. But if you find that there is something that you cannot accept and cannot change, then let it go and move on. Only by accepting all of the things that make you who you are, can you love yourself. True love is an unconditional act, so why place conditions on the love of self?
Forgiveness is another necessary step towards reaching the goal of love of self. It is important to forgive yourself for the errors that you have made, not only for those wrongs against yourself, but equally as important is to forgive the wrongs that you may have made to others. And it is necessary to forgive those who may have wronged you. The Lord's prayer contains the lines, "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Those who trespass against us, includes ourselves. Forgiveness is an act of love. Forgiving yourself is vitally important if you wish to discover inner happiness and lasting peace and contentment. Forgiveness is an expression of love. Forgiving yourself is therefore an act of love of self.
By going in pursuit of my dreams and by walking my path, I gave myself the ultimate gift. I gave myself the gift of love. I don't feel guilty for doing this because I know the hardships and the difficulties that I had to go through to reach this point. My life was never easy and it still isn't. I work hard to protect all that I have achieved and I am humble for the gifts and that I continue to receive, and for the lesson that I learn along the way. I give thanks for my journey every day.
I'll finish with a quotation that I wrote a couple of weeks back. At the time, I had the idea of writing a post on the idea of self love, but like a lot of my writing, I have to wait for the right moment to arrive, when I feel at one with my heart.
"When a person talks of love, they describe an emotion that is found deep in their heart. By following your heart, you are therefore walking the path of love. A true, lasting love is found first within each of us for ourselves, and then in another kindred soul, who walks in step with our own dreams and aspirations."
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