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Recently, looking at various distressing news items,
I've been thinking about the issue of self-love, about loving yourself.
We've all been taught, as an important value, that we should love other people,
But perhaps people haven't talked so much about loving yourself.
How come?
Probably we take our self-regard for granted,
so that nobody thinks it's necessary to emphasize that we should love ourselves.
Human beings are egotistical.
They always want to have things their own way.
But even if things are going really well,
it doesn't necessarily mean that we're capable of loving ourselves.
Probably the reason its hard to talk about self-love is
that the concept has an unpleasant whiff ofnarcissism about it.
If you saw a person looking in the mirror saying "Damn, I'm really crazy about myself.
Don't bother me."
--I'm not talking about myself—-
well, if you saw a person like that,
you'd want to tell him, "Why don't you just go on looking at yourself in the mirror forever."
I want to say that loving yourself doesn't have to be like that.
Life isn't always easy.
It would be fine if your whole life were happy, but
maybe a lot of people tell you they don't like you
or that they think the world would be better off without you.
In that kind of painful situation, in the final analysis,
if you don't love yourself, in the sense of taking responsibility for yourself or looking after yourself,
if, when somebody says they don't like you, your response is "That's right, I don't like myself either"
--in that instant, you're going to lose the desire to go on living.
I've felt the need for that kind of attitude more than once myself,
and since we don't know what's going to happen in the future
the kind of situation where, in the sense of taking care of yourself, you have to love yourself, can easily arise again.
Of course it would be great if nothing like that ever happened and your whole life were happy from beginning to end.
The only thing is,
I always had a hard time understanding myself.
When I did something good and people were happy or thanked me,
I was relieved and thought
"I must be basically a good person."
But when I hurt somebody or made them angry,
I was really disappointed in myself
and felt like maybe I'm fundamentally cold-hearted or something.
In fact, loving yourself is
probably more difficult than loving anyone else,
because you know yourself so thoroughly, through and through.
Thinking about various things you've done in the past,
well, I've done this, I've done that,
and maybe I've done some good things,
and you remember some negative things too.
It's questionable whether you can say about yourself as a whole
"Oh, I really like myself."
At this point, maybe what's needed is a fundamental change in
how you think about the problem.
I looked back on various of my "selves"
and thought, "that was a good self, the other was a badself,"
and I started by accepting the fact that all of them were in fact me.
Instead of thinking "I'm basically a good guy"
or "I'm basically cold-hearted"
I stopped trying to figure out which of them was the real me
and began by accepting all of them as parts of myself.
And then I started thinking about why I, a single individual, change so much.
In the end, it's in response to different people and different situations.
When I talk with my old grandmother,
I 'm a very relaxed me,
but when I speak with work partners,
I put on a severe expression and talk about difficult issues.
When I'm with people who infuriate me,
you can bet that I'm not exactly softspoken--
but actually I do my best not to come into contact with such people in the first place.
In any case, my "selves" are quite different in the different situations.
And while it may be very difficult to love oneself in all one's aspects,
it's probably possible to love the self that emerges when one is with a particular person.
"I don't like myself when I'm with that idiot,
but when I'm with that other person, I like myself pretty well"
--that shouldn't be too difficult.
Let's think about romantic love.
Suppose there are two women,
and they both like you pretty well.
Say you first go on a date with one of them, and you really enjoy eating together,
You tell one story or joke after another, and she laughs and appreciates them.
You both smile spontaneously,
and when you notice the time, it's already late, and you have to run for the last train,
thinking "Wow. That was really a good day."--suppose it was that kind of date
About the other woman, you have a good feeling,
but when you go on a date,
you don't seem able to say anything interesting,
and if you're not careful, there are awkward silences,
and you have the feeling that you're a really dull person.
You keep planning to go on to another place,
but you end up thinking, "Well, maybe one is enough," and saying goodbye there.
If you're asked which woman you want to see again,
well, for myself, I would certainly want to see the first one.
Part of that may be that you like her more,
but it's also because you like the person that you are when you're with her,
you take pleasure in that self, and feel that it's a worthwhile identity.
"Love is coming to have loving feelings toward someone else."
This is of course not an incorrect definition,
but what I'd like to add is that love is, even more,
coming to be able to love yourself as a result of your partner's kindness and support.
That's what I'd like to suggest.
When I'm with a particular person, I can be totally relaxed and straightforward,
I can reveal all sorts of things that I would never reveal to other people--that's what I mean.
Unfortunately, human relations sometimes come to an end.
That can be the result of a fight,
or it can be the result of death.
The pain of losing someone is of course partly things like not being able to hear their voice,
not being able to hug them.
But another aspect of the sadness is not being able any longer to be the self that you were only able to be with that person.
It was only with that person that you were able to talk freely about so many things,
it was only with that person that you were able to set aside pretence and vanity,
do stupid things, say dumb things.
Without that person,
you're not able to be that self any longer.
Might this not be precisely the pain of parting?
Of course the opposite is true as well.
If somebody tells me that they love me,
it's really a great feeling,
but if they confess that it's because of me that they've become able to love themselves,
or that they like themselves more when they're with me than when they're with anyone else,
that affects me even more deeply.
That my existence validates the existence of other people in that way
gives me a really intense pleasure.
I think people probably react like that each time they find a self they like,
and that it becomes a kind of foothold for them in life.
When you're surrounded by lots of people,
you might get the feeling that if you're not loved by a significant percentage of them,
you can't go on living--in the classroom, at the company.
But actually, you may not need so many likeable "selves".
If you have two or three that you like a lot inside you,
you can treat that as a foundation for living,
and five or six may be all that you need.
It makes a difference whether you think that you have only three friends in your class
or you think that there are three whole people there who make you like yourself.
Loving yourself is certainly not looking in the mirror
and saying "Damn. I'm pretty great."
I would say rather that it's loving oneself thanks to other people
or by way of other people.
I think this is probably the way into a genuine self-love.
And this is, in the end,
one of the reasons that we love other people, and one of the reasons they are precious and indispensable to us.
Thank you very much...