The Major Difficulty in Loving Yourself
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It’s great that virtually everyone is on the same page when it comes to loving yourself. But I’ve felt it necessary to go into the mechanics of it every now and then to highlight why we often struggle to practice what we preach.
Society will tell you to love yourself but society may also imply that you’re unlovable. Not just in a mean throwaway comment by a stranger or in a screaming match with a loved one, but in terms of socialization.
If you had certain traits, occupations, perspectives and interests highlighted to you by your society, it implies that these things are the good stuff and everything else is either meh or bad.
If your parents and loved ones didn’t show you a requisite amount of love for you to actually feel like you were worthy of love, it is only natural for you to lament about having to do the self-love for yourself.
But because of nature and nurture, we have a tendency to listen to society’s opinion on us. So if you have a trait that is bad or lack traits that are good, it is again natural for you to feel bad about yourself. It is natural for you to abuse yourself.
Some of us are fiercely individualistic and would never sacrifice what they believe or who they are because of the opinions of other people. Like anything else in life, there’s good and bad in that. However, when it comes to those of us who care what people think, we would like to be able to belong somewhere and to give love in return. I think everyone would enjoy that.
So what’s the solution? How can you love yourself when society has told you that there are things that are unlovable and you find yourself with one or more of those traits?
I suppose we can start with cancel culture.
Perhaps you’ve noticed but everyone is kind of awful. Yes, even you. Yes, even me. It seems that we’re all a bit ignorant, self-centered, myopic and bigoted. Some of us are guilty of these things more than others but it doesn’t change the fact that literally everyone is flawed.
And of course the people who deny this are the most dangerous of all. They’ll snap a neck and defend their reason because they refuse to see themselves as bad. But you know what? We’ve all done this!
