Faith: Loving ourselves a hard lesson to learn
Is it easier to love and care for others or ourselves? What about forgiveness for bad choices? The two are intertwined.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” and “love the alien as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18 and 34; Mark 12:31) are Jewish and Christian imperatives and fundamental ingredients for being decent, ethical people. Attitudinally and actively loving friends and all others is a filter we can use for morally authentic behavior. For example, related to our actions, words, and opinions, we can simply ask: Is this based on love and care? It’s a very practical concept, challenging to implement daily in our interactions, and well worth the effort and practice. Forgiveness is integral in many circumstances, including for our own freedom in letting go.
Where does it all start? With us. Do we truly love ourselves via self-care? Loving others flows from loving ourselves first. This includes forgiving ourselves for mistakes and choices we wish we could go back in time and change. Time is the key component. From a healthy self-care standpoint, we must relate to time and life in the now and move forward.
In her insightful, memoirish, and delightful book "Plan B," Anne Lamott highlights the importance of “militant self-acceptance.” Regarding forgiving others, she observes that forgiveness “means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back … It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person.” What about ourselves? We can forgive others and avoid meeting them for lunch, but we always must have lunch with ourselves! We also set ourselves free when we stop working to hit someone back, but do we habitually “hit” ourselves?
From birth to death, we are always in our own company. We can’t get away from ourselves. There’s no vacation, and we must work so that we never want self-abandonment. Loving and forgiving ourselves requires diligence, honest awareness, and practice to develop and hone the art of self-love over time.
Edith Eger, a Holocaust surviving psychologist, gives every person a present in her book, "The Gift: 12 Lessons to Change Your Life." Her lessons derive from her own darkest and other experiences as well as frequently recurring themes in her therapeutic work with patients. Dr. Eger wrote her therapy-for-everyone masterpiece at age 92. Awesome! She has experiential and professional “standing” to offer wisdom. Dr. Eger’s principles are grounded in practical but not always conscious reality: each person’s freedom to choose their attitude and responses to life’s circumstances.
Dr. Eger views life as a “process of learning and becoming.” She emphasizes that we are all “blessed with the gift of life.” This is true regardless of our time and season of life, meaning the “gift” is not always easy.
Dr. Eger emphasizes: “You are the only one you’re going to have for a lifetime.” In a chapter subtitled “The Prison of Self-Neglect,” she inquires of all: “How can you be the best loving, unconditional no-nonsense caregiver to yourself?” I don’t know about you, but I have seldom recognized the importance of that inquiry. I believe we must ask ourselves daily and endeavor to stay deeply aware of it. How we treat ourselves must be a consistently conscious priority. Love must start with and always include us.
How does accountability fit into self-care, including for mistakes and bad choices (inevitable parts of humanity)? Prospectively, Dr. Eger contrasts remorse (good for us) with guilt and shame (bad for us). She analogizes remorse to grief in characterizing remorse as “an appropriate response to a harmful mistake” we have made. Note the past tense for mistakes, with remorse being “in the present” and co-existing with “forgiveness and freedom.” In contrast, guilt and shame are retropective traps that weigh us down. Dr. Eger describes them as “a pattern of thought that we choose and get stuck in.”
Experience teaches me that personal health and freedom spring from letting go of regret and forgiving ourselves for mistakes, while learning from them and making better, more informed choices. Focusing today on “now” and then again tomorrow, living a step at a time with awareness, can result in greater meaning, joy, and contentment in life and with ourselves. How do we accomplish this? We make and live the choice each day.
A practical image that has helped me is friendship, as in truly being my own best friend. Do you love your close friends as much as I do? Would you do most anything for them? Me, too. So how about conceptually stepping outside yourself each day to be your own best friend? Transform your self-talk from judgment to acceptance and encouragement. Forgive yourself for mistakes while holding yourself accountable and living forward to make better choices. Develop your own habits of loving yourself as you endeavor each day to love, care for, and respect all others. It all starts with you.
Walt Shelton is an author, speaker, and part-time professor at Baylor law School. His books include "The Daily Practice of Life: Practical Reflections Toward Meaningful Living" (CrossLink Publishing 2020) and "Authentic Living in All Seasons: Focused, Fearless, and Balanced" (CrossLink Publishing 2022). waltshelton.com
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Faith: Loving ourselves a hard lesson to learn
