Should Loving Yourself Be a Goal?
As spiritual teachings increasingly permeate our lives, we begin to live by them and adopt values within this framework. We place spirituality within expectations like always being calm, wise, constantly humble, connected with nature, free of judgment, loving oneself... and we expect these ideals to work in our current living conditions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go as we hope.
Love, in the end, is where a person will inevitably arrive in their quest for themselves (the universe).
As we try to make sense of ourselves, our path inevitably crosses with love or the lack of it. It is quite simple to observe how our behaviors flow unconsciously from our bodies in an attempt to be loved. The lengths people will go to in order to be loved, appreciated, and supported—or what they’ll stop doing—are endless. In fact, from a place of lovelessness and rejection, one could even go as far as to commit atrocities against a nation.
Then, we realized that getting this love from others wasn’t so easy, that this love was in someone else’s control. And on top of that, this idea popped up from teachings, almost without proper grounding: “If you don’t love yourself, others won’t love you.”
And so, humans found a solution: Well then, I must love myself!
But how?
Our clever, linear minds, having learned tactics and strategies from modern society, devised a “Self-Love Checklist” and made decisions:
I will love myself no matter what.
I must love myself to be strong.
I must love myself so that being alone isn’t a problem.
I must love myself so that I can get over this depression.
I must love myself so I stop worrying about my weight.
I must love myself so that my partner loves me more.
This, and so much more, began to surface in our actions as we started to view “self-love” as the solution to many problems—sometimes boldly, sometimes quietly. But deep inside, we know we aren’t succeeding, and the conflict within us keeps growing.
In my vision, love and knowledge are the same energy. To know yourself, to allow trial and error, to learn that your flaws serve you instead of rushing toward the throne of a complete “self,” yes—even judging and disliking yourself can be part of self-love.
Under the guise of self-love, a person might trap themselves in a comfort zone, becoming stuck in place instead of moving toward transformative actions. Moreover, they might start to think of themselves as separate from others, closing themselves off too much.
When we look at the essence: we should digest the awareness that there is no permanent self to love, that within this incredible wholeness, we are continually creating new versions of ourselves while surrendering and continuing (the yin-yang balance).
Instead of standing in front of the mirror with the task of saying “You’re amazing,” I might find that love in the wave of the sea, in a child’s cry, in leaving someone behind, in a tree’s blooming and withering—in the very essence of existence, in every particle of the universe.
If we only associate love with actions that make us feel good and fail to look at the bigger picture, it may seem like love is absent. Then, we might turn love into a task.
Yet love is always present, in every moment, in different forms. I am continuously and painstakingly recreating myself every day.
Despite all this effort, all this stress, all this striving for the goal of self-love, what if I told you that every action you take is already an unconscious expression of loving yourself—you just haven’t realized it yet? Would you believe me?