Self-Love
Love: An intense feeling of deep affection towards someone or something.
Love manifests itself in many forms - the love between parents and their children, the love between a pet and its owner, the love between two people, your love for some hobby, and your love for yourself.
According to me, the best form of love and yet the most difficult to achieve is self-love. People spend almost the entirety of their lives trying to love themselves. Can a person truly love themselves each and every day? That is for us to find out.
What is self love? I see influencers every day trying to tell me to love myself, but how do I do that? This is not a cake that I simply add the ingredients and let it bake and ta-da my self love has arrived. There are some days that I look in the mirror and I love myself. I love the blackheads on my nose and the hooded eyelids and then there are those God-awful days where I despise how I look. The way my hair hangs around my face, the way my nose doesn’t suit me, the way my stomach rolls every time I sit down. On those days I compare myself to the models I see on Instagram. How perfect they seem to be. I think that God really does have favorites. What I have come to realize is that whatever I see on social media is what the other person wants me to see. No one’s life is perfect but they sure can portray it on Instagram. Hardships, struggles, insecurities. everyone has them, even the person who you think is living the perfect life.
The lockdown completely killed my social skills and confidence. The first time that I had to step out of my house, I spent more than an hour trying on different clothes and staring at myself in front of the mirror. Analyzing every single thing about myself. I used to think everyone was judging me. How I was dressed, talking, carrying myself. Am I walking correct? Is my back hunched? But over time it got better. My friends helped me majorly. Whenever I hung out with them, I forgot about what people thought of me. What I realized was that I spent so much time worrying about what people would think of me that I forgot to live, freely.
Every one of us is like a mound of wet clay, that has been moulded into a beautiful vase by our surroundings, by the people around us ever since our childhood. This vase continues to grow, to shape itself into something bigger and better. This vase is our personality. The best piece of advice that anyone can give is to be yourself. If you are bold and loud then be it, if you are outspoken then be it, if you are introverted then be it. Society will try to tell you how to act, to speak up or to silence yourself, to be more outgoing, or to not be so outspoken. You need to be yourself without any filter.
Many people consider treating themselves to ‘guilty pleasures’ as the sole form of self-love. Sure, we should treat ourselves every once in a while. But self-love is working on ourselves. Self-love is to push ourselves to be the best version of ourselves, to achieve our limits, and push through above.
Your feelings are valid. Express them. Don’t push them deep inside because one day they will erupt. Draw boundaries. Know your worth and let no one treat you in a way you don’t deserve to be treated. You will automatically be surrounded by much better people and your mental health will become loads better.
What I have realized is that I only have this one life. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to mess up and make mistakes. After all, these shortcomings are what make me human. Don’t be too hard on yourself. The only person who will be with you through all the ups and downs of life is you. As soon as you begin to appreciate yourself, everything else will fall in line.
You are beautiful, you are handsome. And let no one tell you otherwise. And I hope that at some point, down the road, you will learn to love yourself, cherish yourself.
“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness”
-Robert Morley
