How to learn not to worry and love yourself
Text: Alice Taiga
"Love yourself, and then you can love another." or worse: "Love the world, and the world will respond to you in return." We know where to read it. In the signatures on the forums of lovers of cosmetics, cats, own children and just those who can spend hours discussing relationships or premonitions. Such signatures always seem to be a bullshit, like lisping even close friends with their children, overheard words of someone else's tenderness and wisdom, smeared over endless bestsellers about how to eat, pray and love. Public revelations of those who went through the fire and came to this fascination with themselves, despite the circumstances, seem to be even more popular. “To love yourself” is probably the most annoying paradigm and emasculated moral of all that grow close to people. They seem like tremendous hypocrisy and trickery, if not born with this feeling or with pain, do not earn it closer to 30. And like any stamp from the field of psychology, this phrase causes, at best, a smirk "whhhhaaaaaat?", At worst - thanks, Cap. Yes, we know that you should not swear at strangers, eat at night, switch to red light. Well, yes, it is worth loving yourself. Thanks, Cap.
The rules of life are generally the most fragile topic for discussion: if you say it as it is, you will get the 10 commandments, if you quit it, it will look like a dashing staged interview. That is why it is so difficult to approach in conversation to the main point, it is so embarrassing to retell platitudes that have been tested on themselves. It seems to me that many problems are rooted in a confident steel voice in my head. Someone calls his superego, passes his messages to the psychoanalyst, and he listens with interest. A steely voice comes from a long life through power and helps to do so many things in order to integrate into the absurd world order. Get up to school at half past six in the morning 10 years in a row. Then another five years in a row to reach the institute and get a job, which far from everyone likes, but it can "lead to something more." Do sports, win and get medals for it. Write a long list of affairs at the beginning of the day, and at the end put a plus sign in front of each case. Breaking himself when he breaks. Do things 100% and take responsibility for everything and always, even when not asked. Blame yourself if something went wrong. Like any tyrant, this literal voice does not threaten and never perseveres to intolerance. He just never leaves and is always displeased with you. He whines about how you can be better (what are you, a rag or a nothing?), Replaces “like” with “should” and completely ignores the words “pleasant” and “good”. Probably half of our time and half of the money we spend are stubs of this voice and the financially available equivalents are “pleasant” and “good”. But, as sung in one eternal song, this is not love.
Love for oneself, just like love, comes by chance. Only in the movie tomorrow everything is different. Only a hero who is killed in the evening will say to himself the day before in the morning: "Today is the first day of my new life." There is no that very Monday when you decide to love yourself and start doing everything right. Such things grope in complete darkness for a long time and with errors. Like any real feeling, self-love grows with time, and it is very difficult to diagnose it at first, and even more difficult to admit that you finally accept yourself. It’s just that at some point you allow yourself to stop and look around: not on vacation for a couple of weeks, but in the midst of all the usual hustle and bustle - for a year and a half. Vanity continues, and you freeze. You say to the steel voice: “Shhhhhh, you are not asked,” and almost with a notebook and pen you watch everything that falls on and falls off from you in your frozen pose.
There is no that very Monday when you decide to love yourself and start doing everything right
They say that the only way to cope with vanity is your own slow time, in which for your own good you have to exist along with the years on the calendar change, governments are overthrown, long-awaited premieres come out, children are born with friends, and the fifth iPhone is longer than fourth. Only in this slow time can you separate what is important for others from what is important for yourself and hear a completely different inner voice. Not steel and confident in everything that knows how much, but timid and unhurried, who enters into dialogue at a particular pace, blocking actions on the machine.
Someone calls it intuition: before each “yes” and “no” there are slow reflections about whether it is worth spending time on this business and on these people, with whom to draw closer, and from whom to stay away, how keenly to feel and live, without torturing yourself. This intuition suggests that entertainment is movement and sincere fun, and not procrastination in anticipation of another series of anything or a message from perhaps the same person. That you yourself are a project drawn with strokes, which can be expanded or reduced indefinitely, and it is only for you to decide that this project is the best and most wonderful. What you have is more valuable and more interesting than what you will never have. That there is nothing eternal, but you need to hope only for the good. That everything human is easier to treat with irony, and the most intimate - seriously. And do not forget about that same idiotic haircut from which you went on the first courses of the institute, remember the snow to taste, and the danger to smell. That time is the main treasure that needs to be stored, properly sold and invested in something worthwhile. That the slogan "escape the sofa" will eventually lead to the ends of the world, and the body is best from walking in the air, dancing and swimming in salt water. That money is more like it when they spend on adventures and gifts, and not on tubes, doctors and dresses. That days are divided into those when you eat a bear, and those when a bear eats you. But it's not forever, and most often your bear - that you slept badly, forgot something, or you have a hangover. That people are more interesting than movies, books and TV shows, if you start asking them the right questions. And that curiosity is the only thing worth remembering when you leave the house, unlike a telephone, keys or money.
People who have managed to fall in love with themselves softly and imperceptibly, like the happy families from the very same quotation, are by nature the same. From them blows good confidence that everything will be fine in the end, if you try very hard and do not be a bastard. They are equally organic, infectious and simple in a T-shirt and shorts, spattered with paint, and with a perfect hairstyle on an important evening. They laugh at themselves more often than at others. With purity they will love that which is not accepted: the hopelessly fucking group that they loved in their youth, their native city, which has changed beyond recognition, and people who find it difficult to make broad gestures. And they will never advise “to love yourself”, because they know that this is not a goal or even a means, but an internal zero kilometer, which must be found in due time for the most interesting things to start.
illustrations: Masha Shishova