Love Thyself

There is a wonderfully uncomplicated confidence in Geet's affection for herself in Jab We Met. She likes being herself. The charm lies partly in how little she seems to need to justify it.

Outside a film, self-love becomes a more complicated phrase. It can mean care, acceptance, indulgence, confidence, or a refusal to listen. We use the same words for things that can lead us in very different directions.

I keep returning to a question: when I say I love myself, what exactly am I doing?

Getting to know the person we are defending

In my writing about love, I have explored the connection between caring for someone and trying to understand them. If that connection matters in a relationship, it matters in our relationship with ourselves too.

How well do I know the person whose happiness I am trying to protect? What do I avoid? What repeatedly frightens me? Which desires are genuinely mine, and which have become familiar because they are rewarded around me?

Saying “I love myself” does not answer those questions. Neither does repeating an affirmation until it sounds convincing.

I think of honesty as a first date with ourselves. The introduction may be awkward. We may discover things we would rather conceal. But a relationship cannot deepen if we keep presenting only the version designed to make a good impression.

There is no need to get everything right at the beginning. There is a need to keep showing up honestly.

Care and permission are different things

I can use self-love to justify almost anything if its meaning is simply that my wishes deserve to be satisfied.

I deserve this. I should not have to explain myself. If someone disagrees with me, they do not understand my worth.

Sometimes we do need to protect ourselves from unfair demands. A boundary can be an act of care. But a boundary is different from a declaration that our actions are beyond question.

If I hurt someone, loving myself does not require inventing a story in which the harm was necessary. It may require admitting what I did and making a repair. The admission can be uncomfortable without becoming an attack on my entire worth.

That distinction is important to me. Responsibility and affection for ourselves do not have to be enemies.

What are we trying to soothe?

There is nothing wrong with a good meal, a new purchase, a holiday, or a quiet evening. Pleasure and rest belong in a life.

But if every uncomfortable feeling is met with a distraction, we may never understand what needs our attention. We keep soothing the surface while the same difficulty returns beneath it.

I might buy something when I feel unseen. I might announce my independence when I feel rejected. I might insist that I deserve better without examining what I keep choosing.

These reactions do not make us bad people. They are invitations to look more closely. What would care involve here, beyond making the feeling disappear for an hour?

Perhaps it involves sleep. Perhaps an honest conversation. Perhaps grief we have been treating as an inconvenience. Self-love becomes more useful when it responds to the actual need rather than the most immediately available comfort.

The self and the image of the self

An image can demand endless maintenance. I have to remain impressive, independent, attractive, or right. Anything that challenges the image feels threatening.

Knowing ourselves asks for a different relationship. I can recognise insecurity without pretending I am secure all the time. I can admit dependence without concluding that I am weak. I can hear criticism and still decide whether it is fair.

That is one reason I connect self-love with spiritual inquiry. Both can involve loosening our identification with the version of ourselves we keep defending.

I am using ego here in that ordinary philosophical sense. It is not a diagnosis. Vanity, defensiveness, and the need for approval can be examined without labelling ourselves or anyone else with a clinical condition.

Love without an entrance examination

The familiar saying that we must love ourselves before we can love others captures something useful, but it becomes unkind if treated as a strict rule.

People who struggle with self-worth can still care deeply. Relationships can help us learn forms of kindness we have not yet learned to offer ourselves. We do not need to become complete before we deserve connection.

What self-understanding can do is make that connection less burdened. I become more able to distinguish your actions from my fears, and my needs from the obligations I am tempted to place on you.

The relationship with ourselves is ongoing. There will be days when we are disappointed in what we find. Love, in this sense, means staying willing to look and respond with care.

I want to be able to say, “This is what happened. This is what I felt. This is where I need to change,” without first becoming someone I can advertise proudly.

That feels closer to loving myself than insisting, at every moment, that I am already my best possible version.