A reflection on loving ourselves.

Bipolar Annie, someone I follow on Facebook because, like many people who suffer from mental illness, she makes an unflagging effort to encourage the people around her, posted a quotation that made me stop and think. 

 I think I've finally learned the biggest lesson of all. You've got to love yourself first. You've got to be OK on your own before you're OK with someone else. You've got to value yourself and know that you're worth everything. And until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can't really have a healthy relationship.

                                                                                                                                ~Jennifer Lopez

I thought about that for a moment.  The Dour Calvinist in me says that we have a tendency to value ourselves too much, which doesn't always add up to realistic expectations of other people.  But that isn't really what she's talking about here.  She means we shouldn't expect other people to mop up our insecurities.  No matter how hard we try, we can never be someone other than ourselves and be happy, and it isn't fair haul in another person and say, "Make me okay."  However, I would add a caveat: when we learn to love ourselves, we must make sure that the love we have is not merely an acceptance or a self-approval, as I think this quote suggests.  To quote someone whose wisdom I trust a lot more:

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing -- say Pimlico.  If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary.  It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico; in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea.  Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico;  for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.  The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without earthly reason.  If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles;  . . . If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two would be fairer than Florence.  

                                                                     ~G.K. Chestesterton, Orthodoxy

Chesterton was writing about one of the great controversies of his day: the question between people who believed that the world was on the fast track to utopia  and people who thought the world was descending into chaos and should be abandoned by the quickest means possible.  His answer was, "We only have one world.  We have to have a picture of what it can be  and then love it properly and make it worthy of our love."  But can't the same be said of ourselves?    

Suppose we are in a desperate situation: medically, interpersonally, psychologically or what have you.  If we merely disapprove of ourselves, then we will give up and devolve ourselves into oblivion somehow.  If we approve of ourselves, then we will remain as we are. I have enough oppressive flaws to convince me that this would be awful, and I'm sure any person willing to investigate his or her soul would say the same.   But if we have truly learned to love ourselves, to believe that that tremulous little thing inside of our heart of hearts that we call a soul is truly "worth everything," as Ms. Lopez says, then we will kick aside anything  that stands in the way of its blossoming into what it ought to be. 

The danger in being merely OK with ourselves is that we might look at some undesirable trait, some unhealthy habit and say, "This is part of me, and if other people don't like it, oh well.  It stays."  Says Mr. Chesterton a few pages later,

If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself.  But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. 

Let's say that our lives are not cities but gardens.  Our personalities vary in pH and consistency, and our thoughts, feelings, and experiences lay out the beds and plant the seeds.   The plants grow and twine and blossom and seed.  Some of them may actually be essential and healthy and ought to be cultivated.  By contrast, some, like dandelions, are inescapable in this life, but we can work around them and maybe even eat the greens.   Some features of ourselves may be good or essential, but they've grown a little wild, strangling other good and necessary qualities.  Think strawberries or mint.  And some of them may be toxic weeds that should have been pulled post haste, but they are so wound around the rest of our lives that we can't get them out with anything less destructive than a machete.  To truly love ourselves is to discern the difference, pull out the bad ruthlessly, rototill the earth, cultivate the good, and, above all, grow. 

Mr. Chesterton did not have a very charitable opinion of mental illness. He himself was a large, jolly man of forthright mental energy and a comfortable grasp on humility.  To read his writing is to read a vigorous assertion of truth (His philosophy is sounder than his history.).  I am not that vigorous with myself.  I have neither the patience nor the strength  to love myself the way I ought to.  I don't have the wisdom either.  And no other human being has the patience, the wisdom, or the insight into my inner life  to keep my garden growing as it should.  We cannot manage each other's souls.  We have a duty to dig in and get our hands dirty, but we need someone else,  someone who can see the whole picture and the delicate details, who has an appreciation for each plant and how it grows, the layout and chemistry of each garden, someone with infinite time and patience, and most of all infinite and intimate love. 

The biggest lesson of all is not is not that we should love ourselves.  We should, but that is not something that we can do wisely or safely on our own.  The biggest lesson of all is that we have a radical example of how much someone already loves us, and all we have to do is return it.  God loved us when we were unlovable, when we were literally nothing.  He holds us to impossibly high standards, but he forgives our failures without a second thought because he has carried them all himself.  It is God who ensures our worthiness and dignity as people and gives us that equal footing that we need to approach anyone else with grace, compassion, interest, and unselfishness. Until we are OK with God, the roots of the weeds in our soul will just grow back.  He will root out all the weeds and replace them with honeysuckle and raspberry vines.  He will tear down the slums and build golden pinnacles and ivory towers.  

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  ~Philippians 1: 6b 

When I am especially discouraged with myself, with my thought patterns or how I've treated people,  I think of the "day of Christ Jesus."  I think about the moment when all the parts of me that frustrate, nay grieve, nay drive me crazy, will be stripped away.  Some of them will be polished and returned to be placed in their proper places, and some of them will be burned to cinders, never to return at all.  I can't quite picture what I will be like then, but I know that I will be the last thing on my mind.  Maybe that's what it is to be OK on one's own.  When everything is strong and clean and vibrant inside, our total focus will be the God who made us that way and the other fantastic creatures that He made in His image.  Those will be truly healthy relationships. 

P.S.  I am finding that St. Theresa of Avila has much  good to say on the beauty and struggle of the soul in  The Interior Castle.  I got my copy from http://christianaudio.com.