I’m sure most of us are familiar with the saying, ‘...love your neighbour as yourself’.
A lot of us make use of it regularly without actually having an understanding of what it is. There may be other views on it, but today, I want to share my view with you.
Before you go all ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, ask the big question ‘Do I love myself?’ It is important to ask that because you can’t give what you don’t have.
You have to love yourself enough to love someone else correctly. It is the amount of love you have for yourself that will reflect on how you treat yourself and the people around you.
What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love is beyond ecstatic feelings or having butterflies in one’s tummy. Self-love does not always mean comfort or pleasure; it could be a sacrifice.
It could mean giving up toxic habits for healthier ones, giving up junk for healthier food choices, hitting the gym instead of going for quick-fix creams and medications, it could mean enduring the pain because you have something to gain just like the fitness saying 'No pain, no gain’.
Self-love could mean healing from childhood trauma so you can treat people better.
Remember hurt people, hurt people?
When you’re broken, you tend to see other people through the lens of hurt or brokenness, instead of love, and instead of showing care, love, or affection, you tend to emit hatred, resentment, jealousy, and revenge.
You suspect everyone who comes close to you because you’re judging them from a place of hurt and not love.
This happens because you’ve not healed enough to be a source of healing to someone else, you’ve not experienced love enough to be able to love others, and you struggle to treat people rightly because you’re still struggling with yourself.
Self-love is inside-out; it’s an overflow from what you have that others feel and enjoy. But first, you need to feel that love enough to be able to give it out.
Self-love could be reading or learning something new just to overcome ignorance, not because you compete with anybody, but because you’re out to become a better version of yourself.
It simply means that you love yourself enough to evolve, and so you pay the sacrifice of reading, researching, and self-development. You can’t teach what you’ve not learnt or studied about; you teach from your reservoir of knowledge or experience and that’s a function of self-love.
So the next time you hear, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, ask yourself ‘Do I love myself enough?’
✍️Blessedink
📷:Me
