Legend’s VIEW
Love yourself: Myth of popular advice
We have all heard it said or even given the advice ourselves, “before you can love anyone else you have to learn to love yourself.” We say these things regarding poor self-esteem, relationship issues and self-worth. But do we really understand the meaning of our own advice? Although this self-help attitude may sound wise and a great application for our lives, it seems to be missing a greater truth.
When others or we offer this kind of counsel what we are really trying to get at is that we may not love every characteristic trait that makes us unique individuals.
When you are in a group photo who is it that you look for first? Most of the time it’s you. We look to see if our hair is fixed, can anyone see any zits, or the spinach left in our pearly whites. Once we begin to dissect the issue of whether or not we love ourselves the advice becomes quite ridiculous.
Of course you already love yourself. When was the last time you fed yourself when you felt hungry? When was the last time you bought gifts for yourself? And when was the last time you looked in the mirror to make sure your face was on straight?
The issue isn’t that we don’t love ourselves the issue is that we can at times be over obsessed with ourselves. Now, there’s nothing wrong with putting on your face in the morning before you go into public or buying yourself nice things but the point being is if we can do those things for ourselves then we should already know how to love another human being.
So rather than trying to solve this problem of not loving ourselves, which really doesn’t exist, we should occupy our thoughts of how to better serve others.
