Thomas Merton wrote that if you do not love yourself, you cannot truly love any other person, and you cannot love God or the idea of God. Since then, a number of spiritual counselors – and a shaman – have told me the same thing. I’ve never quite understood this idea, it always seemed narcissistic to me, the notion of spending a lot of time loving myself. Besides, as has been pointed out to me, I have not always loved myself very much. Mostly, not at all.
When I was told I was ashamed of my life, I denied it at first. But I think it is true in many ways. The idea of loving myself has been growing on me. Someone I trust said I need to love myself in the same way that I love Maria – I think for the first time in my life, I understood what love was when we met. I imagine I was loved in my life before, but I did not know it or feel it.
I see that the love of self is important. And self-hatred is a poison. Fear erodes love, so does anger and judgement, resentment envy. Reflexively, I have denigrated myself as many fearful people do – fear is the anti-love, it corrodes love. The habits of my mind bring up regrets, resentments, mistakes, dangers and worries. To love oneself is not really narcissistic, I see, because it opens the door to loving others. To loving life. To seeing the light and liberating the spirit so often trapped inside of ourselves, but us and other things.
Our culture teaches us to be needy. It teaches us to tell our struggle stories. The people we have lost. The dogs who died. The loss of loved ones. The cost of things. The burden of taxes. The price of gas. We seem not to know that this is the universal experience, as tied to life as breathing. We are not mean to live forever. We and our parents and our pets will all die. The question for me is not how I will die, but how I will live. Struggle stories do not teach love, they teach resentment and loss and fear. Self love requires different stories, new habits of mind.
Our media and many of our institutions tells us that to be secure and healthy, we must have money. My dental hygeniest says I am the only man in their practice over 45 who is not taking prescription medications. Does this make sense? Can all of these men be sick and unable to live without costly medicines? We are told we need our medicines. IRA’s. Lots of savings. Jobs with health plans. I can look anyone in the eye who believes this and tell them that all of these things can be important and people have to make up their own minds. But speaking as someone with none of these things, I can also say there is another path. The idea that our happiness and security comes from things we have to buy, things that trap and imprison us, is, I am learning, one of the most powerful forms of self-loathing there is.
We are, in fact, connected. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot love anyone else, let alone all of us.
I am learning to love myself. So that I can continue to love my life. And the people who are in it.