As I was scrolling through social media recently, I came upon this article that immediately caught my attention just from the title. I was appalled at the fact that choosing yourself could, in any way, be recognized as selfish. I had to read and find out the author’s reasoning. After I had finished reading, I knew I needed to explain the other point of view from a young adult who finally let herself love who she is and not feel selfish about it.
The tag line to the article reads, “Don’t love yourself so deeply you exclude everyone else.”
I believe allowing yourself to be in love with someone else and loving yourself are two different things because they are two different people. This isn’t a game of kickball where you don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings if you don’t pick him or her first over yourself. This is your life. You need to pick you. You are your own person and don’t always need to do everything another person wants. There is no excluding anyone – you are not in a competition with yourself and other people. You put yourself first with love because you are only with yourself. If you don’t love yourself, how do you expect people to love you back? In that case, you wouldn’t need to exclude anyone because they may already be gone due to your lack of happiness and confidence in totally being yourself.
The author then decides to blame her ex-boyfriend for the ending of their relationship, which she claims was because he wanted to “work on himself.” Coming from a young adult who has never been in love, let alone in a real adult relationship, I very strongly believe that everything happens for a reason. The reason I have never been in love is not because I am unlovable, not pretty or attractive enough emotionally. Honestly, it is because I don’t know who I am yet and need to work on myself for when the right person comes along. I need to figure out who I want, when I want it and why I want that person in my life romantically in order to give my all to someone and develop the most important connection: love. You need to know what you stand for as a person, and put yourself first. You have to know who you are, and sometimes you can’t have a significant other in order for that to happen. It can unfortunately slow down that process because you are too preoccupied worrying about the other person and their needs. Maybe it would help to have someone there with you when you’re trying to find yourself. But, what if that is the wrong person and instead of helping you, they end up steering you down a road that was never meant for you?
The author later says, “You can’t do it alone but our society has assured you if you want to do anything you need to love yourself first!!!!!!!!!!”
Society is such a broad term now. Society says if you love yourself too much you are conceited and cocky, so people won’t want to be around you. But if you don’t love yourself at all, you may end up being lonely, sad and depressed. I don’t trust society’s views anymore or feel the need to follow them. We all have our flaws that society might not “agree” with. But, at the end of the day, who is stuck with the flaws? Not society because they have nothing to do with it – society has nothing to do with loving yourself. Loving yourself is a positive act in which people in our society like to spread. Is it easier to be confident, happy and comfortable in your skin to achieve things in life? Of course. Do you really think you are going to get far in life if you are not being the best person you can be? That is where the author is wrong. Society has not assured us anything – it is simply going off of experiences from other people who have achieved much more by being themselves and being confident in who they are.
I recently read an article written by award-winning actress, Jennifer Aniston. She writes to address tabloid rumors and says that she is not pregnant. However, she goes on by discussing how society has turned this world into believing you need to fall in love with someone else to make yourself happy. She states, “We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.” Picking ourselves may be the only way we can truly make ourselves happy.
The author writes, “But what is the good in those qualities if I’m only ‘loving myself?’”
News flash – the moral of the message is not to only love yourself and no one else! That was and never will be the message here. It is to love yourself in order to be the best person you can be in for people to love you back. There is no selfish thing about it. You are being anything but selfish because you are letting people see the best part of you.
The author then brings up this point, “Regardless if this applies to you in a friendship, family, or relationship way just remember loving only yourself so deeply you forget about others is skirting the point completely.”
Just remember the point of it all is to love yourself for yourself because sometimes you can’t fight for everyone else. You have to worry about yourself. No one is “skirting the point.” There is no point. There is no rulebook to the way you live your life and treat yourself.
I chose me because I deserved to. No one else was, so I learned to express love by loving myself. I don’t think that is selfish in any way. If you need to discover who you are by being “selfish” and put yourself before others in order to find who you are supposed to be, well, you better love yourself and be selfish forever.