Myth Busted: Self Love

Disclaimer: This Essay Is Part Of A Series of Quotes I DISAGREE with, explaining why I disagree.

"What if you simply devoted this year to loving yourself more?" - Author Unknown

In choosing an essay on the topic of self-love, which is maybe the most important topic I plan on addressing in the next few weeks, I stumbled across quotes like this: 

"You are magical." 

"The more you love yourself, the less nonsense you'll tolerate." 

"Self-love is not selfish: you cannot truly love another until you know how to love yourself." 

I even came across this acronym: F.L.Y. which stands for, yeah guys, for real, I can't make this up: 

FIRST LOVE YOURSELF! 

This has to be the most ridiculous line I have ever read, and I'm an eighth-grade boy: I've read no shortage of ridiculous material. How does that even make sense? Self-love is at the root of every problem humanity has ever faced. Allow me to rant into your lives for five or ten more minutes. Let me take a deep breath. Count to fifty. Okay... 

Self-love wasn't really a thing until the 1970s. We lived in a culture which, by-in-large believed in humility and the good values that American and virtually every other decent society in history has been founded on respect, honor, and hard work. Then along came some good philosophers who told us that the key to all our problems was learning to love ourselves a little more, to raise our self-esteem. People bring this into religion. There was a time when people went to church, heard of their sins and went away in shame and at the deepest stage of humility: which is actually exactly what confrontation of sins in front of a Holy God should do. Now people go to church to hear a motivational message about how you can be whatever you want to be and go about and live their lives. More and more prominent has this self-love idea grown. And would you look at how it has solved ALL the world's problems! Yeah, right...

First of all, we need to learn to love ourselves? That is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. We, in America, in 2019 do not have to work for a second at loving ourselves. Virtually every choice we make is expedient to our futures. When was the last time you did something purely selfless? Without any expectation of an award, a compliment, or a smile. When? I'll be frank, it's been a long time. Even if I'm doing something nice like passing out an entire package of gum in one class period as I did on Wednesday last week, it has nothing to do with selflessness. I want to leave a legacy. I want to be liked. I want friends. We are the most arrogant, most prideful, and most self-loving people that ever was. If you work yourself to exhaustion and don't feel very loved by self, take a look at your motives. You aren't working yourself to exhaustion purely for others I'm sure. Oh no. There are A FEW instances of that which I have seen, but almost never will people work themselves to exhaustion without themselves as the top benefactor. I would say, as a rule, ninety-five percent of us do ninety-five percent of what we do with purely self-seeking motives. Jesus says "love your neighbor as yourself." That's our golden rule. And we don't have that rule because we need to learn to love ourselves. Rather, we have it because we already love ourselves so much that it serves as a model for the kind of self-sacrifice we should have for others. 

I can think of exceptions to this rule: 

There have been teachers who have done everything for their students. Many of whom are receiving this email. Many I've read about. We're watching a movie in ELA called The Freedom Writers which portrays one such monumental teacher.

I read a story about a girl who was frequently bullied and some girls put pencil sharpenings in her lunch, and she responded by bringing every kid in class a homemade, large, decorated cookie. 

My grandfather, my earthly hero, is constantly on mission's trips, working his butt off, and doesn't want anything out of it. He just loves people, he loves us, and he wants to share his love and God's love with us all. 

And you know what's true about all of the genuine exceptions to this great majority rule is that they are the happiest and most joyful people. Self-love is the last thing they think about, and most of the time they are actually self-sacrificing. Here's the point: we are already filled with self-love. The idea of teaching ourselves to do this more is simply preposterous, and, defies logic sense the happiest people in the world are those who think of themselves the least. 

This is the idea I attacked when I wrote about genuine kindness which is self-sacrificing. When you give part of yourself up, that's when it matters the most. That's when you make a difference. 

Speaking of making a difference, do you know where self-love leads? Well, it leads to a lot of bad places, but here are a few potential effects. 

1, Self-love leads to a flagrant disrespect for other human beings. Most of you who are receiving this email are teachers. I think you would agree that the respect that you see out of students, on average, is exponentially lower than when you started out. Please email me if I'm wrong on that topic, but especially if you've been at it for a while, you've noticed that there's a lack of respect. Any time the motto is me, me, me, which, let's be honest, that's all self-love is, you aren't going to respect others. 

2. Self-love leads to low morals. This includes a lot of things. Laziness for one. Instead of getting on the ball and be productive it's, "I just need to love myself and go to bed or watch this sporting event." Consequently, I'm terrified about how this "self-love" generation is going to face the future.

3. Self-love leads to total anarchy and defiance of basic human principles. Who makes the rules when society is all about me? I do what I do because I want what I want. We have inherently selfish and bad people and we are telling them to love themselves and do what they want. How much common sense does it take to figure out that it won't lead to good places? Trying to stay away from massive controversy here: but for thousands of years, humanity believed there were two genders. Then we came to this idea that you can do whatever the heck you want and now there are over fifty simply because we want it to be that way? Absolutely ludicrous. I don't understand how more pride is going to solve the world's problems. Self-love requires pointing the finger at someone else for the world's problems. Like the Jews. Self-love is the basis for a Holocaust. Self-love is the basis for anarchy. I just don't understand how it is going to help the world. 

Here's what sits at the base of the issue: You aren't going to live forever. You aren't going to take anything with you. At the end of the day, you are a pile of dust and bones. If the meaning of life is to love yourself, believe in yourself, and take yourself all the way to the happiest places. Live your best life now. Well, who cares? Who honestly cares? You aren't taking all the crap you build up for yourself with you. 

I realized something last week, outside at 7:00 and waiting for the bus. Have you read The Hunger Games. There are some jabber jays in this book and they are mythical creatures that sing four-note melodies and then they catch on and all the birds sing the same four-note melody. I watched the movie and this thing was especially vivid. Total silence except for four-note melodies. I realized though, listening to the bird's chirp, where Collins got that idea. Birds make four-note melodies and they do catch on. Are they dramatic like in her series? Of course not. But they are, for whatever reason, literally composing music and singing it together. I heard a bird sing a four-note melody! And it got repeated! How can you listen to something that amazing and walk away prideful? You are a dot on the timeline of the universe. Birds smaller than the human brain are composing music. Do you know how complex that organism must be to do that? The fact is, the proper response to the world we live in is the utmost level of humility. 

Pride is at the basis of every sin and fault in the history of the world. Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they wanted to be like God. They wanted more than they had. Our kids defy authority because they think they are better than it. We lounge around and take naps all day because that's what's comfortable for us and the most important thing for us is us. Hitler thought that Germany was the best and killed millions of innocent lives with a desire to prove it. 

In light of this, how dare we assert that we need more self-love? How dare we? You aren't all that in a bag of chips. The best thing that can happen to a person is to be genuinely humbled. Sorry if that offends you, but you aren't that great. Oh, by the way, the greatest among us aren't all that great. All those teachers I mentioned? Not that great. The little selfless girl with the cookies? Just another girl, granted with a big heart, but just a girl. My grandpa, family members, etc. Just people. And me? The worst of the worst of the worst. Does that offend you? I'm not trying to discredit people who had an amazing influence on my life. But I am saying that we are human beings. At the end of the day, there isn't any purpose to building yourself up (There's no purpose to anything without Jesus if you want to get technical here, and I've written that essay before. Feel free to find it or email me.). We are obsessed with being what we want to be and doing what we want to do and we are destroying everything that human beings should stand on. You do not work together when you focus on yourself. You cannot properly love others when you love yourself too much. I'm not writing this email to make you feel on warm and fuzzy inside. I do not write these essays to do that. If you want that you should google "self-love quotes" and have yourself a nice couple of hours feeling superficially wonderful about your accomplishments (caution, you will want to be near a bathroom in case the urge to barf suddenly overcomes you). 

Actually, my hope is that you read this level and are absolutely broken and completely humbled. I will follow that up with some essays to come. That does not in any way mean that we should be afraid of being wrong or afraid of making a difference. It doesn't mean that because we are small we try to do nothing. It doesn't mean that we are so low on the ground that we just give up. We do have responsibilities. But we don't need help to realize that. Self-love is the last thing we need because we have such a prodigious profusion of it anyway. My hope is that we walk away broken because it is far better for us to live life as individually broken people living together than to be individually prideful people building ourselves us so that we become together, a completely broken society. We should primarily be living first of all for Jesus, but then for others. If we have food on the table and a roof over our heads and a steady job to provide for the family we have taken care of our self-love. Don't argue with me, or I'll keep writing.