A few nights ago around 3am, I heard commotion in an apartment building next door to me. The brownstone walls muffled the heated dialogue, but this is what I heard. "All I want to do is live my life the way I want to live it and kill myself. I have no one to talk to and no where to run." A young man was contemplating suicide. When I looked out the window and there were 4 police cars and an ambulance. I never saw the young man, but I did recognize that suicide was the highest for of self-hate. The only way to combat self-hate is with self-love.Over the course of our lives, we probably say "I love you" more times to other people than we do ourselves. I think it's more important to remind someone to love themselves than to tell them you love them. For many people, the last time they said "I love you" was to someone else.
Do we have the capacity to truly love others without first declaring our unconditional love for ourselves? Do we need love from others or can it be self-supplied from within like inspiration, creativity, authenticity, hope, or will? I agree that it is important to love others, but in order to love our neighbor like ourselves, we need to love ourselves first.
When was the last time you looked in the mirror and told yourself "I love you." Whether you've looked in the mirror or not, sometimes actions speak louder than words...actually all of the time. Every decision we make is a choice to love or not love ourselves. When choosing how to spend each second of our day, how we choose to treat other people, and when choosing whta we are going eat all are opportunities to say "I love you" to self.
I don't know about you, but I have some work to do. I'll start us all off by reminding you to "Love you".
Inspired by the boy next door & PJ
It is important to love yourself before loving others. What can you offer someone else if you don't know what there is to love about yourself? How can you express love to an outside party where you have never felt it towards yourself?
Great piece man. I couldn't agree with you more. The problem that we're confronting now is that we actually are becoming addicted to hating ourselves. We actually love to hate ourselves. Hatred is what is affirmed in our circles and in our culture. We love to hate so much that young people are starting to single out random people and attack them in our streets.
We are become like brutes, even dogs. This is why we allow our women to be called female dogs. I was reading Ecclesiastes the other day..a book that is sometimes anything but uplifing and it says that as long as there is life there is hope, even for dogs (Eccl 9:4). Perhaps if we can restore the power of our hopes, we can put meat on the dry bones of our hopelessness and live out the loving purpose for which God created us.
Thanks so much for the inspiration brother.