Psychology Place

A musing on loving

A musing on loving

By Dr Karen Weiss

We are told that loving oneself is the foundation of happiness, when we love and care for self we are more likely to be loved and to give lived to others. There has been a whole self help movement built around this concept of self love….positive affirmations, visualisations, the secret, are all based on the premise that if you love yourself enough to believe that you deserve to achieve what you want, all you need to do is go for it and presto. If it doesn’t happen then maybe you don’t believe in yourself enough?????

I’ve never been sure about this supposition about the way love works. After all love is a process not an outcome and surely loving and being loved is never static or still. Love is the most dynamic of all emotions and most closely connected to its opposite in hate. This implies that when we love ourselves, we might also hate ourselves some of the time too. This is actually really important  because it builds humility, gratitude and compassion…when we arise from hate to find forgiveness and acceptance we can find a new and revived love that can feel stronger and more real.

But what about like…the old maligned feeling of liking, the poor sister of love, the place one finds oneself when it’s not strong enough to be love. Anyone can like something….you only need to go onto Facebook to discover that fact. I always wondered why Facebook didn’t add love, just so people could be a little bit more discriminating… LOVED that….

Liking something is easy so why not just like yourself. Why not like your body, your hair, your nose, your legs, lips, moods, thoughts, identity? Cos liking ain’t easy, it’s not just a thumbs up click, it’s a meaningful effort to say what I was born with is mine and I’m going to do my best with it cos I’ve only got one lifetime and one me.

Perfectionism is the antithesis of love because it is rigid and closed off to the compromises love will insist of us. Loving oneself requires the capacity to accept our limitations alongside our capacities. liking ourselves makes us see that our limitations make us unique and are in fact our trademark characteristics. From this basic level of self respect we can build our identity alongside our values, we be me more defined and really know what we like.

The great writer and philosopher, Herman Hesse, says this about love….
Everything in life can be imitated and forged, everything but love. Love can be neither stolen nor imitated; it lives only in hearts that are able to give themselves wholly. Love alone gives life meaning. That is: the more capable we are of loving and sure ending ourselves, the more meaningful our life becomes.