I was just watching a movie, feeling bored, when a friend of mine suddenly messaged me and asked quite a weighty question: Do you consider yourself as someone who loves herself? I felt that it was quite apt to post my thoughts and the answer I gave him here because this blog is for and about the questions that we ask and the journey of finding out the answer.
Let me start with the superficial first. When one says that she loves herself, most of the time it meant that they accept their outward appearance, their hair, face, body, legs or whatever can be judged by the measure of outer beauty. For years I have been struggling with this superficial loving yourself thing. I hated how my legs look. I hated my frizzy hair. I hated any flaw I could find on me. Why? Cause I'm scared that those are the only things people focus on when they talk to me and I'm scared of what they think of me after. Only when I grew older that I realised that people are actually self-centred beings. They focus on themselves, while other people, in reality, don't care. Since people don't really care, then why should I be afraid? Why should I hate my hair, legs, or whatever...? I see that my reasons to hate myself is invalid. And I started looking myself in the mirror and I see a gift. As for why I will explain it later.
Other than just outer appearance, it is also important for you to love what is inside you. What I mean by it is to learn to be more forgiving towards yourself. People make mistakes, often. And it is crucial for you to forgive yourself when something didn't go your way. However, this does not negate the fact that when you did something wrong, you just let yourself do it. This is not what loving yourself is. When you love yourself, you ought to want yourself to be really pretty in conduct, not just visually. Pretty in conduct means that you want to do good, like the way God wants you to act. If I find that I lack in those things, I will try to better myself. To make myself more of the image of God as I once was created as. To be what I was once was. The idea of loving yourself is still accepting yourself as you, and still wants to improve yourself every single time.
When I said what is basically a summary of these two paragraphs to my friend, he said that this kind of thinking is quite different than those posted on the internet. I asked him, how, and he said most of the time they just say: you should accept yourself. That's it. I then think about why I was able to see it that way. Why do I need to better myself? Why isn't accepting myself enough?
This is where the idea of me--my body and my life, being a 'gift' comes. Imagine you were given a present for your birthday. And it is something that you have been wishing for God-knows how long. I'm pretty sure that you will cherish it as much as you can. You will dust it off daily to make sure it doesn't get dirty. You will try as hard as you can to make it like how it once was when it was given to you. I, too, am a gift. As a Catholic, I know by heart that I was created by God in His image. I ought to love myself; to love the life that has been given to me by God. I'll say it again: My life is a gift from God to me; this life, this body, is a present. And for God to love me, when I am so flawed and imperfect, is amazing and awesome. And just like your present, I need to keep it clean and as new as possible by improving myself because throughout my life I have made it dirty by sinning. I was given it in its most immaculate and perfect state and I ought to cherish it and keep it that way. It is not right to soil something so precious, don't you think?
Then why is it so hard for other people to see this when it felt so common sense to me? I may sound a bit radical and you may judge me all you want, but they don't see any value in valuing themselves because they never see value in the life they own in the first place. Because for them, everything happens not because of a Higher Being wants them to live, but because of chance. Big Bang happened and we happened to live on Earth that coincidentally allows us to live on it. Then, how much value can you put in chance? How much can you put value in your life if it all exists because of chance? Loving ourselves is worth it because we are worth so much more and because God gives us our worth that is beyond us. Imperfect as we are, He still calls us His children. Flawed as we are, He still love us without needing a reason other than the fact that we just are. For He is so loving that He let us live, breathe into us new life each day. How can you not love the most amazing thing you have? How can it not be worth it?