After almost 5 years I saw this article I wrote on Blogspot after Facebook reminded me. I gave it a read and it seemed a perfect way to re-start my writing journey after an unexpected hiatus.
How do I feel reading this? It was powerful and hopefully, it is a good way to start this journey again. So here is the post and if something here touches you, let me know.
I don’t know how this post will end but I am having an impulse to write about “self-love”. So many success gurus and maybe every asshole you ask for advice will tell you ” You gotta love yourself more, all your problems will take care of themselves”. Well, at least that’s what assholes I was (un)fortunate to find told me (š).
And it took me a long time, going to such people for advice in itself was a lack of self-love. And maybe that’s why they were making fun of me, here comes another of those gullible guys, let’s give him a puzzle he won’t be able to solve. “You gotta love yourself more mate”.
Well, me writing this is proof I actually cracked the code.
I started seeing how much you hated yourself and you were so afraid, your image, that you’ve worked so hard to make might’ve been exposed, you were only saying what was safe, that which would not be challenged as you know everyone says so. You haven’t seen what loving yourself does, so in compensation for the love you can’t find for yourself, you act something more than you actually are and try to act intelligent in the hope that your advice might actually work and maybe you might be liked, not even loved mind you, just liked. Your advice that is copied from others is a cry for help, at least that’s what I see. And now I even start feeling compassion for assholes.
Now let’s talk about YOU, you know you are not one of those AH. Yet you might have 50 shades of AH in you. Don’t read this in a harsh tone because I am writing it in a tone, a professor of philosophy might use. Stern yet soft.
All that you are trying to hide in those “make-up” and all that too much of body you’ll try to conceal beneath your branded clothes. And all those men who hide behind “only women are insecure ” tag lines, on offense but you have your own makeup- beard! Let me not go into details guys- you try to make yourself visible in girl-food and man-drinks.
Sorry but that’s not how you love. Acting like a man – so that no one would ever know that you are not liking the person you are is not love. It’s a compromise on your part to be liked in such a way, this falsely validated that these people like you. People you are lying by faking who you are, actually like you for your false self.
Love and I don’t mean the complex philosophical question. I mean simple everyday terms like – respect for yourself, liking what you do because it’s the right thing to do because it is what is logical because it is something you know somewhere deep down will increase self-respect.
One of the characters that come to mind when I think about self-respect is Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s “To kill a Mockingbird.” If you gotta love yourself you have to think like Atticus and DO THE RIGHT THING. Because in doing that you’ll have respect for yourself and also you’ll know, I mean F**king KNOW that it’s something good. And in doing that you’ll start seeing for yourself how good a person you can be.
The criticism won’t bring you down, the people thinning around you because of your success won’t bring you down because you’ll KNOW it’s YOU. It’s Your TRUTH and no amount of evidence provided against will ever move you from that.
Your Awesomeness Coach
Ojesh Pokhrel