... Love, sweet love.
A classic song, with a lot of truth in it. But is it that simple?
Yes, the world definitely needs more love. But, it's the object of love that I am concerned about. Because I have heard so much talk of "learning to loving ourselves", and things like "start by loving yourself" and the like over recent times, with all the emphasis on looking inward and loving ourselves more, and I have to say, I think it's codswallop.
These sayings are banded over social media, often with a cute meme and I cannot understand it - unless it's for someone with severe mental health issues surrounding self perception. And it is never aimed at this section of society.
It is aimed at you and me. And I can bet that the majority of the population has no issue in loving themselves. They are washing, nourishing their bodies, relaxing, cleaning their homes so they can live in a nice clean environment, getting themselves medical treatment when they need it......we love ourselves already! We don't have a problem with loving ourselves. We do it very well. When we're in a rush for something, our own needs come above the person in the side street waiting to get out the junction and we drive right by them, loving ourselves over that other person.
When we pay at the til in the supermarket, we buy our own food and cleaning products and we don't think twice about the person behind us - our own needs and desires come way higher up in our list of priorities than the guy in the queue behind us. We take care of ourselves and we have no problem loving ourselves.
This is something I saw a few weeks ago, around new year.
If we are being urged to spend even more time and energy loving ourselves, we are going to have a very messed up world.
Why? Because, actually, it's an excuse to do what we want, be selfish, and let ourselves off the hook for things. It's so easy to love ourselves, and for the majority of the population we love ourselves enough, too much even! I could give hundreds of examples, but just think, when we work harder for the bonus, or the promotion, we are doing it because we love ourselves and want more for ourselves. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong....we should strive for excellence, we should take care of ourselves. We need to clean our house, eat good food, exercise, work, relax, do things that we enjoy....
But we are already exceptionally good at this. We are already loving ourselves more than enough.
So, what I'm saying is, we already do this so much - do we really need to do this more? Or be bombarded with the message that we need to do this more? The world does not need us to love ourselves more. It needs us to love OTHERS more.
The world needs us to be less selfish, less self absorbed, less inward focussed, and start thinking about other people like we think of ourselves.
If the argument for loving ourselves more is to actually look after our mental health more, then the message is being lost. Because we are not looking after our mental health by loving ourselves more.
Good mental health does not come from being so inwardly focussed.
We need to be less inwardly focussed, and more outwardly focussed! Look upwards and outwards, and start spreading some of the love outwards to the world, and we'll be giving the world, and ourselves what we need.