To love yourself

It's a surprising discovery, then, to find out that one of the hardest things to do is to love yourself.

She had never really thought it would be so. To love a filthy beggar, yes. To love someone who is uncouth, and rude, and offends your sensibilities. To love someone who irritates you in every little thing they do.

Those she understood the trouble with loving. You would naturally love those whose qualities you admire, or those who show special kindness towards you. Who loves a backstabber? Who cares for a liar? Who desires a murderer? Who is head-over-heels, madly-drunk-in-love with an aimless slacker?

I do, she realises. However terrible I am, or could be, I still love myself.

But is that real love? Will real love ever allow one to be less than one's full potential, will real love ever be content with letting someone slide, suffer, live a miserable life?

To truly love oneself, she decided, is more of a parent's love than one's love for a beloved (at least at the first bloom of love). In a beloved, you accept them fully despite their flaws - in fact, they are all the more beautiful, vulnerable, adorable for having flaws and you adore them for it. You downplay and whitewash the cracks in the painting and you exclaim over the colours and composition, even though to others it may look like a drab piece. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, after all. Your eyes have fallen prey to your heart, they are no longer true to you, or maybe they are truer to something more true than sight.

But, for a parent, though they think their child the best in the world, will always seek to guide and correct their child's flaws. They will take the burden upon themselves, be willing to spend countless amounts of time and money just to grow their frail seedlings. They will scrimp, and save, and suffer in order to fulfill their child's dreams. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they never stop believing that their child can be successful, can be mature and their comfort in old age. And if they fail, they will usually blame themselves. Even though they did all they could.

To love yourself, you want the best for yourself. Not just in material things but intangible things: the deepest friendships, the highest skills, the best character. If you really loved yourself, you would do anything to achieve what you regarded as the highest plateau of humaly achievable success.

If you really loved yourself, and you knew that the highest motive and greatest purpose of your life was to imitate Him, you would do anything to reach it.

Which is why, she concluded, it is really hard to love yourself.