Hew

“Love yourself” is the sweet nothing I’m whispering to the women in my life this Valentine’s Day.  The need to adopt this as my campaign for an occasion so obviously meant for romantic love materialized when I discovered it is pretty much impossible to say out loud that I love myself. For me it’s more than a little uncomfortable.  Adjectives like narcissistic, conceited, egomaniacal and just plain icky cross my mind.  How could the l-word possibly roll off my tongue and not leave me wondering if I am hubristic?  Which suggests that maybe I don’t find myself to be worthy of my own love.  Ouch!  Could I be any harder on myself?

I wish I was alone in this.  I really do.  Unfortunately there are women all over the place questioning their worth, holding themselves up to a higher standard than they would ever hold anyone around them, withholding self-love until their own idea of perfection is achieved. 

In a world obsessed with pulchritude, we look at ourselves from a distorted, unilateral position.  When we hear the sound of our voices on a recording, or catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror from an angle we rarely see, we’re mortified.  The irony is these vantage points which appear so foreign to us are exactly where others view us from every minute of every day.  And no one has run away screaming yet, right?

The damage goes beyond meeting elusive standards of physical beauty.  Trying to juggle the responsibilities of our demanding lives, we learn to tell ourselves we are not enough.  A friend recently said to me that she feels like she doesn’t have enough time to get to everything.  And you know what?  She doesn’t.  None of us do.  But too many of us spend time feeling bad about this, believing that we are somehow letting down our families and friends, that we don’t measure up if we can’t fit it all in.

It might seem like there is no harm in not loving yourself.  But I have to disagree.  If you don’t cut it in your own mind, self-confidence suffers.  It doesn’t matter if you’re an over-achiever and everyone around you sees your value.  If you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll never be able to achieve your dreams, never break your own glass ceiling. 

I do think it is possible to fall in love with yourself.  The method lies in this quote from Rumi:  “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”  What I find compelling about this is the idea that love exists at our core.  If we strip away the superfluous, the imagined expectations, the self-imposed demands, we’re left with no reason not to love ourselves.

Logic would tell us that if we’re feeling like we’re not enough the answer would be to do more, but it’s the opposite.  When we accept that our time is finite and prioritize what matters, we’ll start doing less.  And begin to feel better about ourselves.  Much has been written lately about the burn-out suffered by leaders who don’t take time to do for themselves. The latest argument for working less found last week in the New York Times is here:  Relax! You'll be more productive.

Michelangelo applied this idea of subtraction as well, saying that he could envision his work of art within a block of stone; he sculpted to allow the world to see what he already knew was inside.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lifetime building a fortress in my mind to fend off self-love.  Recently I’ve started chipping away.  What’s coming into view is even more beautiful than I ever imagined, and has likely been visible to others all along.   Maybe someday my own sweet nothings will be a little easier to hear.