Confronting who we are as people, deep down in our being, can be hard.
We often hear that we dislike certain traits in others because they are reflections of parts of ourselves with which we struggle- known as “projection”1- and we hate others (or parts of them) because we fear the same to be true about ourselves.2 We might hate when someone is routinely late for meetings, though we rush out the door every morning. We might get uncomfortable when someone says something racially or ethnically insensitive, though the last time we saw a person of color pass our car we took note of whether or not the door was locked. Sometimes it can be as trivial as how loud a person speaks or as significant as the way they speak down to someone else. We all have little things (or big things) we hate about other people and sometimes that can tell us a lot about ourselves.
I find myself completely on edge when someone exhibits an excessive amount of insecurity. I grow weary very quickly with self-deprecation, and if someone asks more than once if I’m upset with them, I, indeed, grow disproportionally upset with them. *Cut scene to me asking my husband for the third time in the same hour if he truly loves me, or if this has all just been a really long, fruitless con.*
When my son was younger, he told me he hated himself. It was heartbreaking, though the concept was not foreign to me. When I asked him why he didn’t love himself, his question was very simply, “Am I supposed to?”
The answer is very clearly yes, but I’m not exactly sure why. The religion in me wants to say “Because God created you, you are perfect as you are, and we should not hate things that are good,” but that means absolutely nothing to someone who doesn’t believe in God. And, quite frankly, not a lot to someone who does, either. The idea of self love and appreciation are not lost on most people, but it can still be hard to implement, especially if we come from families or groups that consistently undermine their own intelligence, comment negatively on their own body, or hide parts of themselves because they are ashamed.
Speaking openly and honestly about where we are is a helpful beginning, but confronting without follow-up does nothing productive for us. We admit to not liking ourselves, then we sit and ruminate in that feeling until the stench becomes unbearable. Just don’t be like that, I used to think about people when they would complain about something they dislike about themselves. Just be different.
Just stop being addicted to xxx. Stop being around it.
Don’t get so mad so easily.
Be happier.
Yes. I truly have thought these very things at various points about various people and, in the purest form of projection, they are all points I speak internally on a regular basis. I have become angry at others for not simply taking it into their own hands and correcting the part of themselves they didn’t like while at the same time trying desperately to change the same parts of myself. What’s so hard about it? Just be different, dammit.
Why is it so hard to change? When, in this process, we fall or repeat past behaviors we are seeking to change, it feels more like failure than ever before. We want to be better, we feel we are better, and yet somehow we still fall short. Every time someone else commits these parallels we are reminded of our own shortcomings, like rubbing salt in an already exposed wound. We lash out at them even when they are working through their own process of behavior change, or, as I often find to be the case, they are embracing the very thing they hate about themselves and petty jealousy is added to the emotional swirl.
Love, for all the stories and poetry, wars and unity it inspires, is such a simple, yet somehow complicated, concept. We experience this phenomenon individually, putting complete trust in the person we give our hearts; we open ourselves up to being deceived, sometimes into thinking love is expressed through harm; we recognize it as we feel it, though sometimes it changes and we wonder if it is the same love it was before. Love, depending on the way it is given and received, changes our whole world, for the better or for worse. But when we love someone or something, truly, honestly love it, don’t we want what is good?
When we love ourselves, maybe the answer is that we want what is good for us- to want what is right, what is good, what is true. We have to step into who we are completely- the good and the not so good- and want good for the whole person. We have compassion, because what good comes from shitting on ourselves? We confront struggles, because if we don’t grow we don’t continue to live. We work with or around obstacles, because what good comes from giving up?
Anyone who has ever attended a wedding has heard 1 Corinthians 13: 4-6:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
We take this to be a list of traits to aspire to, ways to be towards others, but I'm wondering if we have gotten it wrong. Rather than pointing to all the ways we do not exemplify love (I have literally failed at half of these on this day alone), maybe it is a way to celebrate love when we experience it.
In her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans refers to all the ways christians have gotten the Proverbs 31 Woman backwards. She repeats this sentiment on her blog-
“As a poem, Proverbs 31 should not be interpreted prescriptively as a job description for all women. Its purpose is to celebrate wisdom-in-action, not to instruct women everywhere to get married, have children, and take up the loom.”3
If we, just for a moment, consider Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians, could we open ourselves to seeing this as a celebration of love rather than a prescription, just like the Proverbs 31 Woman? (this might not be anything like what Paul is actually saying to the people he was actually writing to, so since we are reading someone else's message anyway, maybe we can get a little creative with it) And then, as we learn to celebrate love in others, we notice those little moments when we accidentally show ourselves compassion and celebrate the love we are planting for ourselves.
If I could go back to the moment my son asked me that question years ago, I wish I would have said something similar to this- “You don't have to love yourself, but you will be a hell of a lot happier in life if you do.”
Let’s talk about it:
When we show ourselves compassion, does it feel authentic? What influences may have affected the way you show love to yourself?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/putting-psyche-back-psychotherapy/201707/why-what-i-hate-in-you-also-says-something-about-me
https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/3-things-you-might-not-know-about-proverbs-31
Thank you for this.
Loved this. Makes me think of forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves and others. Sometimes the actual change never comes, although the struggle is over a lifetime.