Love Thyself

I believe one's first priority in life should be to learn to love oneself. I find it curious that loving oneself is often associated with narcissism and is thus generally frowned upon. To me, loving oneself and being narcissistic are two different things. One's about having a healthy self-love so that one does not develop self esteem issues, and the other is about loving oneself to excess such that one becomes incapable of considering others' needs.

In my opinion, one is incapable of truly loving others if one cannot actually love oneself. In fact, those who do not love themselves seem to be the sorts of people who act in a mean manner towards others, or seem to mechanically perform beneficial acts without self-motivated intention. For example, I know of people who have a very other-driven aspirations. When they do things, it's exclusively for the sake of other people. I do not believe it to be a bad thing to wish others well, regardless of the origin of those motivations. However, I find their situation to be precarious, because the actions are done in an effort to seek approval from others so they feel validated in loving themselves. Basically, should that approval disappear for any reason, their self esteem crashes. It is not unlike a junkie seeking a fix.

Then again, self-love is not necessarily something that is easy for everyone. There are various reasons for it, ranging from real personal problems to trouble overcoming social conditioning. I suppose it helps some that I am something of a narcissist and would generally do things primarily for myself, but then again I also have little trouble doing beneficial things for largely altruistic reasons. Regardless, my view of life is to first love oneself, and the other loves will follow. Mostly.