I think the concept of “loving yourself” is so used to it, but not that much absorbed… So much so that I see that there are beliefs that shopping, skin care, massage, sports, self-care, buying flowers, ordering food is to love yourself. Well, I say, let them stay… After all, women in society did not get all these areas easily. But for self-love, self-compassion is not enough at all. This is like covering the exterior of a dilapidated building with magnificent stones and decorating the garden. However, when you enter the building, you encounter ruins. So what we call self-love is much more internal, about self-acceptance. I think that not accepting ourselves as we are leaves us without love.
And it is actually very difficult to love and admire oneself because the beast within us is insatiable. Whatever we do demands more. He puts an ideal picture in front of us and says; “Look, you’re not like in that picture, you’re still missing. You are not as successful, talented, or sufficient as in that picture, you are lacking. You must cook better, you must be a better mother, you must be a better wife, you must know more, you must be thinner, you must be prettier, because you are not good enough just the way you are. And if you’re not good, you don’t say to yourself, “Bravo, you did this well” and so you don’t feel strong, and if you don’t feel strong, you don’t give yourself the love you need…
In today’s society, we accept ourselves only if we succeed. Just as we were appreciated when we were good children in the past… Maybe our being accepted or not was dependent on how harmonious, smart, and successful we were, but who puts this condition now? I guess we need to remind our brain of this, right? “You don’t need conditions to accept yourself in order to love yourself…”! “You are enough just as you are. You may not be a good enough mother, wife, friend, house cleaner, cook. So you can slow down, you don’t have to run…” Because we can’t handle everything. We cannot be perfect. When we accept that we are not perfect and do not strive to be complete, we sow the seed of love. All that remains is to water that seed.
Do you know what we water with? With our mistakes, our shortcomings, our bad sides, or rather, when we grow old with compassion for these shortcomings, we water this seed. That’s when the seed of love sprouts. When we treat our bad parts with compassion.
You know, there is a lion inside all of us, he is the ideal person we always wanted to be but could never be. Maybe we are not lions. We are the rabbit, we are the frog, we are the turtle. Think of babies, every baby is born with his own temperament: introverted, extroverted, active, calm, observant, active, etc. But how do we mold all children as we grow up? The name of this pattern is to be harmonious, to be trouble-free, to be prudent, understanding, helpful, etc. then we turn into adults who lose their inner voice, do not recognize their temperament and want to be the ideal lion. Stereotypical adults.
First, let’s discover ourselves, let’s learn about our capacity, while one of us can take care of his home, his child, his school and his job, this may not be possible for the other. But when we call it success or failure, we do ourselves a disservice and miss that each of us has strengths hidden in different parts of life. Unfortunately, we are unable to discover our own treasures by focusing on the apparent goodness of others. So I say; Let’s have journeys where we will discover our own treasures…
