Be yours. Self-love is everlasting.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I got the idea to paint a candy heart with the words “Be Yours.” Because at the ripe old age of whatever I am now, I know I don’t want to be someone else’s, really, until I truly want to be my own.
And then started to get down on myself for how long it had been since I picked up my watercolor pencils. 20 years almost. I was an Art Major in college. Most people don’t know that about me. My skills are rough and rusty.
But I picked up the damn pencils anyway and made a really lop-sided heart. I don’t give a shit how bad it looks, really. It’s Art, right? What matters is I made the damn thing. What matters is I loved myself enough to try and not worry about making something perfect and just being enough where I am in this moment in my life.
What matters is that I am practicing self-love.
For the past few years on Valentine’s Day, as I was grieving a breakup and my own changing views on the world, particularly around love and relationships, I wrote a lot about what I had thought Love was and what I was seeing it to truly be. I compiled those pieces and made an ebook, which you can buy here.
But now, years later, I’m thinking about self-love as the everlasting love I’m devoted to nurturing. Self-love is the ongoing relationship I have with myself, the person who I’m with 24/7, for better and for worse, until I die.
Am I open to another relationship? Sure. Someday. Maybe even soon. I’m crystal clear on what I want and how I want to feel and who I want to be for myself and another person in my next relationship. After being alone for so long, I’m not giving up the pleasure of this perfect solitude for anything less than the best (according to me, anyway). I wish more people embraced this as a lifestyle choice. I want to inspire more people to choose it intentionally so they experience less disappointment and heartbreak from their unrealistic or unexamined expectations of other fragile human beings.
And I think that nurturing self-love is how we achieve the love we seek and crave in our relationships with other humans. It’s through the practice of self-love that we come to realize how precarious life is and how raw and delicate we all truly are. It’s through self-love that we learn what we want and need, and can practice true empathy and compassion with and for others.
Much of what people call Love or know it to be is more about power struggle. Self-love helps us unlearn all of that.
Until we practice self-love, we think people will complete us because social norms say so and marketing is effective in seducing us into believing that. We develop these really ironic and often hilarious pictures in our minds, some beautifully embellished stories even, of what we think we deserve and how other people should behave to make us feel better about ourselves.
All of this is rarely based on reality about the limited tools most people have to believe in their own worth and value, let alone hold space for ours.
But without self-love, we only keep seeking and craving externally and no human can ever fill that void. Most can barely fill it for themselves! No wonder they can’t for us. No wonder we can’t for others, until we learn to do it for ourselves. Sometimes you may find yourself trapped or stuck with someone you thought would fill it only to find they’re part of the void, itself!
Not all relationships are like this. I’ve been working on my cynicism regarding relationships and adjusting accordingly in my writing. I know people out there feel they’ve found love and I trust that they know well for themselves what that means. I just found that the more I explored my own expectations and long-held assumptions about love, I realized how wrong I’d been. And the poor decisions I made as a result. And the new choices I wanted to make moving forward.
So for the past few years I’ve been focusing all my energy on my own self-love. It may occur as incredibly selfish to some people, but I think it’s the best possible thing I can do for myself and every person I come into contact with.
When we are feeling our best and love ourselves from within on a deep, profound level, it’s really a win-win for us and every person we encounter. When we know ourselves well inside and out, and spend time, energy and resources on improving our mental and physical well-being, we are better versions of ourselves in the world.
And self-love is available to us every moment of every day. We never have to wait for it to text us back or make time for us or validate us or listen to us. We nurture it, we generate it, we provide it — all the time. Self-love is the love we seek and crave, and it’s always right there in front of us waiting to be claimed.
It’s dependent on nothing external and no conditions outside of us. It’s available to us when we have a zit or show up late or feel a little too bloated for our favorite jeans. It’s there waiting when we lose an important contract or get overlooked for a promotion or feel lost and forgotten and undervalued.
Self-love sits beside us, pats us on the shoulder and says, “I’m here.”
And it’s available in so many various and appealing forms! It’s a perfectly baked chocolate chip cookie to savor, or a brand-new hat that fits perfectly, or a warm bed on a rainy day with an exceptional new book. It’s a hot bath for your aching body or some freshly cooked veggies served up in your favorite bowl. It’s your pajamas all day. It’s blocking toxic people on Facebook. It’s hours lost in your woodshop. It’s the transcendent feeling of writing or gaming or hiking outside for hours without noticing the time.
It’s all this or none of it and so much more. And we don’t need to run it by anyone, first.
Unlike love between us and other imperfect humans, the kind we hope will last but rarely does for so many important life-changing reasons, self-love is everlasting. It’s here, for us, unconditionally, whenever we choose to allow it.
As a writer and storyteller, Dillan DiGiovanni shares insightful inspiration about identity and resilience. In his writing and storytelling on stage, Dillan combines his personal and professional expertise in behavior change, identity development and integrative health for people across all sectors and subcultures. He has appeared on PBS/World Channel, the TEDx stage twice, keynoted at companies like IDEO, Microsoft, General Assembly and ActBlue. He’s also a Global Labs Mentor at WeWork.
After over a decade in New England, he now lives in his native NJ, running on 80s music and coffee and needing to eat more greens. He’s currently at work on his first book.
