There is loving yourself, and giving yourself love. In a society today that preaches self-care, and promotes certain figures and lifestyles - the difference is not so clear anymore between good self-love and selfish self-love. If everyone can see the difference this year, then maybe the world can be a more pacifying place. Giving yourself love, is the best antidote to a world scripted with perfection imperfections. Giving yourself love, is being able to see that we are evolving, but not as much and as fast as we could be; our sermons on self-care, peace, and charity are all but drowned in the negativity founding some of the organizations promoting them.
An analysis of the body positivity movement will give a bit more clarification on what I mean. Below, you will find two pictures of various women. The first is from a Dove advertisement and the second from a Victoria's Secret one.
There are many attacks that can be made by both pictures. Such as, where are the representations of Asians, women in hijabs, slimmer models in the Dove campaign? Where are the actual 'nude' colors, bigger models, and other races in the Victoria's Secret? But I digress. They are trying to give love to other bodies, and rather than receive attacks, should get criticisms. By empowering the more malicious comments out there against either of these campaigns, we are giving hate. We are using hate and feeding the endless cycle of anger and subsequently violence.
When we give love to ourselves, we feel secure for who or what we are. We understand that our self-worth is not determined by the medals we receive nor on the number of similarities we can identify with the models on our phones or in these advertisements. When we give love to ourselves, we educate and help to broaden other close-minded people out there. And if they seem unyielding, we give love to ourselves by avoiding that person's malice.
When we give love to ourselves, we see our respective self-worth, and the self-worth of others. We see each other as equals because no one is more worthy than the other. We are not more worthy than others, we do not have the right to hurt others because we deem them lesser than us. Giving love to yourself is the same as giving love to others.
And at the end of the day, if the only person in the world you can save from hate is yourself, then that is fine. Let's just end of the cycle.
In the word's of r.h. Sin, the one who inspired this article in his collection of poems, whiskey words & a shovel:
"...sometimes your soulmate
is yourself
and everything
you've been searching for
can be found
deep within your soul"
So who are we to hurt others, when we ourselves are still hurting? Still needing that love and healing only we can give ourselves? Why hurt when you can heal?
