The Lie of Self Love
The lie of self-love perverts it’s true nature and inherent value.
There’s a trend of late delightedly festering at the root of too many others. A trend that rebrands and reframes the relationship with the self to focus on what it shouldn’t. A trend born of the times, a time of rampant loneliness, isolation, digitization, ill-advised relationships, artificially imposed stress, and desperate desire for validation born from society’s wreckage of meaning and value. As with most popularisms of the era, it combines seemingly sensical enough elements into a malignant Frankenstein ideology, whose moldering of reality causes further damage in its presumed rectification.
The plethora of content, authoritative reels, and declared experts opining on this recently knighted discipline is bewildering in scope, as is the painstaking effort to umbrella multiple aspects, good and otherwise, into a championed practice most adamantly apart from accused selfishness and narcissism. Therein begins the lie already, as this centering on the self to the degree of self-absorption is just a rose by another name.
Chief among hyphenated selfs, self-love arrives with the largest entourage; self-compassion, self-esteem, self-acceptance, self-growth, self-nurture, self-awareness, self-worth, self-care. Self. Self. Self. Just typing this essay elicited several suggestions to hyphenate self with whatever word followed, no matter the sense. There’s a metaphor there. And yet, proponents insist this practice is most certainly not selfish, even if we seem unable to have goals, awareness, accountability, respect, or esteem without neurotically appending the self to each.
Rather than accept and celebrate, best to thwart this viral strain before it further infects every angle of view and prevents much needed improvement. Moreover, we should flat out reject the Trojan horse of incessant reframing of common practices. For example, the modern fixation on being kind to yourself for flaws and mistakes—a sort of self-validation by another name—inevitably results in excuse, procrastination, and disinterest for the more vital pursuits of soul-searching, examination, and resolve for betterment. Thus, obsession with self is not a leap of progression but head-in-the-sand regression.
The current craze of expounding upon relationships with self to all who have one is the unsurprising effect of confusion over what the real self is. No shock then that it’s method of address is so misdirected, an ineffective treatment aimed at symptom over cause. Follow your heart no matter what others may think or advise, because you deserve happiness. Well, what if your heart is leading you astray? Wouldn’t love of the self mandate a recognition of when you need to listen to others? How about, don’t feel guilty if you can’t commit to something important, because your needs come first. Fine, don’t stew in negative feelings, but the initial impulse toward guilt is your real self signaling a need for a closer, more honest account of your decisions. It’s the voice telling you that you’re justifying avoidance and inventing excuses to remain within the confines of self.
So merrily it rolls along, the lie of self-love, a rationalization to banish or ignore all discomfort, accountability, responsibility, community, and anything else forcing us to man up and step up in favor of supposed self-niceness, convoluted compassion, and mis-desired ease. Because, in truth, turning love inward doesn’t just confuse its value but also perverts its very nature. Love was never meant to be self contained. Love wants to flow outside the self.
Everything in this world has a particular wiring, a wiring which speaks to the nature at the core of the entity, a predicate not only for how it will behave but also should. Defiance of nature protocols results in an aberration requiring study and investigation so as to adjust back to its natural, healthy, harmonious state. Perhaps there are instances when inherent behaviors change, but that only speaks to a new set of patterns it’s supposed to align with. Of course, there’s also the raw potential within an entity, the unrealized capacities only summoned or defined in reaction to external conditions and experiences.
There’s also the truth, either natured or nurtured, of an opposing attribute operating within an entity. A benefit when it acts as a containment, discernment, or bettering mechanism, allowing the entity to behave per a particular pattern while relying upon having appropriate gears in place to prevent excessiveness.
All to say, the human form and self have a general and specificized nature. Well, so does love. Love has a particular wiring, a natural, healthy functioning which speaks to how it should be used. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon as it should be for love to turn toxic or suffocating, a love so unmitigated and forceful in intensity it forgets to take the recipient into account so outpouring supersedes effect and turns detrimental. Again, there are times when following your heart is less than ideal and intervention by someone with a love healthier for you than your current own is not just necessary but vital for realignment. Thus, the possibility for unhealthy love is recognized, albeit not always by the parties involved, which only further indicates that healthy love does have a definable, recognizable identity and system of use.
Opposite unhealthy love is idealized love, the whimsical, entirely fantastical notion that true love is embedded within the universe, just waiting for the perfect encounter to manifest. As has been addressed, there is love that is true, but not true love. Blame Hollywood, of all poor models, for the proliferation of that nonsense.
What then is the nature of love? What is its healthy manifestation so it can be employed and experienced in the best and most beneficial way? Are there varying levels of intensity within the healthy spectrum of love?
Yes, there are gradations, and they’re healthy because they remain aligned with love’s essential makeup. Healthy love follows its nature, love true to the wiring woven by the Creator from the start of all creation. It begins with two sides, the one who loves and the beloved. They are not the same person. Moreover, the nature of love since its inception is to flow like water, streaming from a giver to a receiver, spreading outward, away from the self. Love strains against its nature when deliberately turned inward.
If there was any doubt, consider how the heart, the home of love and all other emotions, seems to have been misplaced. As per the nature of things, there’s a wiring to creation that states right is the side of kindness and giving, left the side of strength and restraint. Why then is the heart on the left?
As the great Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson explained it’s because the heart, love, is about the other person. It’s about your love for someone else, so when you face another, your heart is on the right side. His right side.
The heart is not misplaced if you understand and appreciate what it’s all about.
Ergo, love is true to its own self when it gets to be its true self. Yet the lie of self-love not only defies the nature of love, but unconscionably perverts it in forcing it to resist its creation by turning back on the self. Love doesn’t want to be reversed; it wants someone else. It’s the only way for love to find substantive joy and fulfillment.
What of the golden rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Have you not noticed this Torahic teaching places the self as key to understanding and showing love to another?
So we return to the confusion over self. A person can only love the true self if they know what the true self is. After all, it too was wired and gifted by the same Creator of love. Does the true self align with the advice of the day advocating that love be showered back upon your own self? Is that not a love of physical, self-absorbed self, already proven to be removed from true self?
The self of the golden rule is the intangible, immeasurable soul-self, the only self wherein its recognition of others truly allows us to transcend external differences and embrace the truth of existence. It’s certainly not a self to ever insist upon focusing on the needs of your own self to the exclusion of others. It’s certainly not a self that would ever stoop to self-absorption. Notably, it’s the self which rescues an individual from an unhealthy relationship with self by extricating him from the entanglement of his own mind and forcing consideration of someone else. This is the self of the golden rule we’re meant to love.
Despite this, proponents of the lie of self-love still insist that loving yourself is integral to showing others how to love you. The assertion is inherently false as it once more makes everything about the self, even as it continues to declare this practice has nothing to do with self-centeredness, selfishness, or narcissism. The truth of loving yourself means that your intense love for living and goodness is a tool, a model to teach your selfish self how to love others; overlooking flaws, downplaying mistakes, altruistically desiring good, championing goals, automatic reaching for compassion and understanding. Loving yourself isn’t the end but a means to loving others, and is very much unlike the lie of self-love with its warped adamance that unconditional love for others can only be realized through unconditional love of self. Nonsense. Not only are these not mutually exclusive, but, if anything, love of another is more important than love of the self. It’s the only way to ensure your heart and emotions have not been misplaced and that your real self is aligned with the ultimate, if unrealized, truth of your nature.
Should we cast it all away then, the possible good with the obvious bad? What will we do without self-love? Without, however can we realize a relationship with the rest of the self until we reach the aforementioned ultimate level of love? What at its nature would not be defied if turned back upon the self?
Respect, just respect, for others and yourself. For the lives we’ve been given and the forms therein striving for purpose and betterment. Gradations of respect present the possibility for the exemplary throughline of dignity, awe, and reverence. Respect for others is the truer way to model how others should treat you. Not demanded, commanded through deed, worthiness, and example.
Respect is specifically about containment. Respect is about holding back the self so something, or someone, else can fill the space. It’s the admirable strength and effort to make your own self smaller before the supposed importance or consideration of someone else. Your continual filling of that space gets in the way, and self-love will only expand your dominion. Respect holds the self back as a sign of deference to someone who isn’t you. The current disfigurement of self-love is too damaging a perversion to fully comprehend the incredible value in that.
Is turning respect back on the self truly healthy? How can we ensure it doesn’t either come to defy its wiring? Well, depends if it stays true to its nature. Respect of the self is a regard for the body you occupy and the soul that enlivens it. A sense that there is purpose and specific design to your makeup, and while you live, you are at the controls of this particular combination of parts, and when you are gone, there will be an accounting for your method of operation. Respect for self is a respect for the very nature of life and the vital role every entity has within it, the only way you can truly respect other selves. It’s a deep, unwavering recognition that we have not been confettied upon creation and that each piece fits in a way so perfect we cannot fully perceive, let alone fathom, it.
Moreover, self aimed or not, love is an emotion subject to the will of other emotions. Love is fickle. Love cannot be relied upon. Respect, however, is a value. Respect shows up every day you employ it, regardless of the mood of the day. Love may convince you to protect what’s yours; respect will mandate your best in service to someone else. Most importantly, respect is the opposing mechanism which keeps the outward flow of love healthy. In return, love is the mechanism which keeps the inward restraint of respect from reverting into over-withdrawal.
Respecting the self means holding in high regard the knowledge of individualized purpose and providence, fostering a desire to care for this uniting of parts so its time here, its potential talents and contributions, will not be wasted. It’s about pulling back to make space for others. It’s about pulling back to adjust and see past the moment. It’s about focusing on how the amalgamation of you can be used to make things better for someone not yourself.
This doesn’t mean that love has no place, but that self-love should be replaced if we’re to be a better, happier, healthier people. Moreover, the greatest act of self-love is the recognition and regard of the true self in another. Such has been wired into the very nature of our hearts from the start.