The necessity of self-love

“Be touched. Allow loneliness to caress you with feathered fingers until the sensation consumes you. Smile as it picks at your seams and unravel if you must. If it crumbles you, crumble. If it tickles you, be tickled. Yield. Solitude is a human experience; don’t deny yourself an opportunity to grow. Accept the experience and be nurtured by it. Fill the gaps between your body and your soul with things that bring you joy. By this I mean deriving pleasure from simple things and allowing their beauty to brush you. Simplicity is key. Become your own lover and best friend. Appreciate the stillness which accommodates your own company. You know how when you adore somebody so much, all of their imperfections become perfect and you can find beauty in every freckle, blemish, tan line, and frown line that litters their skin? Take time to look in the mirror and view yourself as if you are the love of your life. Fall in love with faint details. Be affectionate. Touch yourself. Hold yourself in the way you wish to be held, kiss the back of your hand. You’re beautiful; appreciate your existence.”

—  Thespiritualslut, from My Antidotes For Loneliness

After reading this quote I was really inspired to blog about loneliness and - in particular - self-love.

I noticed that many people that I am surrounded by struggle with the idea or the thought of being alone and for this reason they avoid it completely. They throw themselves into various situations where the opportunity to be alone never presents itself.

I struggle to think why anyone would want to avoid being alone because personally I feel like being alone is a beautiful feeling. It allows you the opportunity to reflect and grow as a person and realize who you are before you fully give yourself over to someone else.

A while back I was talking to one of my friends who had been single for about 3 months after which he made the comment that he felt as though he had been single for too long and needed a girlfriend. This would’ve been a perfectly reasonable remark to make, as many people harbour this attitude. I however, found myself wrestling with the fact that he thought that being single for 3 MONTHS was too long. In my eyes, 3 months is really no time at all and the fact that he made this remark confirmed my assumption that he was dependent on love for happiness.

I know that this “need for love” or “dependency on love” is an attitude that exists universally. And I believe that it comes about because people do not love themselves enough to be able to be alone. I reached the conclusion that this is a key factor in contributing to why relationships end in heartbreak. I’ve seen it happen enough times to confidently say that when many people are lonely they tend to settle and fall at the feet of the first person who shows them affection. But what happens when someone who meets your standards comes along and shows interest in you but you’re stuck in a relationship that you’ve settled for?

You’d probably end up leaving the person, and rightly so because you deserve happiness, but it’s unfair that at one stage what was once your object of affection was given hope that they could be enough for you only because you were feeling the need to feel needed.

I saw this quote by Ayn Rand once, it goes like this:

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’. The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite and the love of a parasite is worth nothing”

With this quote, one is introduced to the idea of self- love and realization of self-worth. Very often we don’t realize what we are worth and just how valuable we are. We often deny the compliments that are sent our way, not because we are looking for attention but simply because we find difficulty in believing them.

Very often you hear guys say that the most appealing thing about a woman is if they possess the quality of confidence. I think that there’s a lot of truth to this comment in that I believe that if you see your own beauty, so will others.

So why is it that people get involved in relationships when they have no idea or no recognition of self-love and self-worth? I believe that you will never know how you deserve to be treated if you don’t realize your own value before you get involved with someone else. It’s unfair to expect another to love you when you don’t love yourself in the way that you should.

I’m sure many people believe that they may love themselves, but very often it’s not in the sense that is necessary. Loving yourself does not mean that you are conceited or confident enough to do certain things, but rather that you accept what you are, and furthermore what you are not. And even though you fall short of many peoples idea of perfection, it’s okay because you realize that perfection is a perceived idea and the qualities that you possess make up for the qualities that you lack.

Only once you love yourself in this way, will you be okay with being alone.

So the next time before you get involved with someone, realize that if you give yourself the opportunity to exist by yourself, then you will be able to exist by yourself, because your existence is not dependent on another person’s. “Take time to look in the mirror and view yourself as if you are the love of your life. Fall in love with faint details.” – And once you have done this, once you have fallen in love with the faint details, then so will everyone else.