Who do you love?

How do you love them?

There will always be higher peaks of status and achievement, but so what? Life has many potential meanings. I believe that one of the “meanings of life” is to love yourself.

I have put decades of work into trying to earn my own love. I made so many things harder than they needed to be, as if the struggle would prove my own worthiness… to myself.

It is the silliest thing I have ever done; striving to earn self-love that was a choice. Ultimately I held the power to experience it all along. Or did I?

The paradox is: I did earn it. Across the last six months of this trip I have observed myself in thousands of novel interactions and situations. Going into the trip I viewed myself as capable of acting very selfishly, hurtfully, and corruptly. That’s the self-image I couldn’t love.

Instead I have consistently defaulted to acting with integrity, kindness, and humour. For me it was the path of least resistance, so you could say I defaulted to being myself. Observing the natural expression of myself again and again was enough, even for a diehard skeptic like me, to dispel my corrupt self-image.

This is a big change for a mistreated human animal. It has brought my ambitions, motivations, and striving into the spotlight. I find myself marooned in knowing, in feeling, that I am enough. Drifting in self-love, everything I was doing to prove myself now seems a bit redundant – but I still have responsibilities. So the question is: where do I go from here?

My first step is to say, “this is really important.” For the rest of the week I am off work and allowing myself to feel whatever comes up. This is the respect that new perspective deserves but is seldom afforded.

First though, I want to make one thing crystal clear. I don’t believe people who claim you can simply say “I love myself” or “I am enough” and have it come instantly true. I tried that a few times over the course of decades and it never stuck. I also sense that my newfound self-acceptance, though solid, still needs nurturing.

The big difference today is that for my whole adult life I’ve been asking “Who am I?” Now I know that at the very least I am a lovable creature.