For some reason this week, I was thinking about a post from my friend Rick a while back - I can't get the link to work, but it was the "Rethinking My Neighbor" from January.
It occured to me that I wanted to comment on it but couldn't quite frame what I wanted to say. However, I know what I was thinking about and have now found the words.
True love, genuine love, can only be shown to others when we love ourselves. We must accept ourselves and love ourselves before we can love others as we must be able to empathize with others. While we may not understand each others feelings fully, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes as it were and empathize enables us to have compassion and caring for others.
So when God commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and do unto others, etc., I think this is a part of it. My niece was telling my sister one time a while back who all she loves: her daddy, her mama, Grandmommy, Papa Jimmy, Mafa, and Uncle Jim, she also paused and said that she loved herself too. What a good thing that she knows that!
This is where true love begins.
About Me
- Martha
- Originally from Columbia, SC Fun loving but serious minded - I display all the classic Aquarius personality traits. My favorite Saturdays are spent watching as much football as possible or tailgating in Columbia and then watching the Gamecocks. I also enjoy watching basketball and golf, but football is my favorite.
2 comments:
"Wuv - Twoo Wuv" - Buttercup's wedding, The Princess Bride
I'll leave a comment here then, if that's ok :) - and if I remember right, it was just a thing on emphasis for me. Sometimes I get the feeling that we collectively generally get into the "love ourselves" or trying to do that better, and we leave out the "love others" part because, along with what you said, we don't really love ourselves properly, and maybe because we're selfishly loving ourselves. But you're absolutely right, I think, that we need to get a healthy handle on being lovable, loving that aspect of ourselves that is lovable, and then not leaving out that we need to be loving outwardly, too. Something like that maybe?
Yes, mostly that we must accept ourselves first before we can extend that out as we are told to. Kind of like that - you have to be a friend first to have a friend saying.
Loving ourselves gives us the ability to empathize, feel healthy emotion, and we are thus able to and should love others, do unto, etc.
If for some reason we do not love ourselves, we are not able to love others at all and this is a very sad thing.
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