Do you love yourself?

Want ik hou van jou
is niet de sleutel tot de ander
maar ik hou van mij
al klinkt het bot en slecht
want wie van zichzelf houdt
die geeft pas echt iets kostbaars
als hij ik hou van jou
tegen een ander zegt

(Because 'I love you'
is not the key to the other
but 'I love myself'
even though it sounds bad and wrong
because those who love themselves
give something truly precious
if they say 'I love you'
to someone else)

- Harry Jekkers 'Ik hou van mij' [1]


There are a lot of things which we are told to love. A family, that special person, a nation, a pet or a job. But what about loving yourself? What is so bad about considering loving oneself to be the ultimate goal in life? What does loving something or someone else truly mean if you cannot feel the love for yourself and your existence? Can you truly be yourself and find happiness if you do not love yourself?

Self-love is often regarded as something 'bad', in the sense that it makes someone 'selfish' and possibly narcissistic. Someone who cares about themselves first and foremost cannot be a good person, after all. That's why self-sacrifice and altruism are the proper values to follow in one's brief existence in this world. [2]


When raising a child, it is generally recognised that what a child needs the most to develop properly are stability and safety. It is thereby the task of the parents and the environment to ensure that this environment exists, in which the child can learn, grow and discover themselves. To become a person who understands and loves themselves, so that through this love of themselves and their existence, they can learn to love the existence of others, and this world in which we all live.

It should therefore come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that during experiments with a so-called Universal Base Income (UBI) participants found themselves much happier, much more relaxed and much more productive. The clue here is the shift in expectations between 'being a child' and 'being an adult'. Instead of the low-stress, nourishing environment of an ideal childhood, the adult is faced with a high-stress, uncertain and unstable environment. An environment in which one's self-worth depends solely on one's performance and ultimately the most crucial resource needed to survive in society: money.


A human adult roams around, doing what has to be done to survive, which generally means exploiting themselves in the service of others to obtain monetary compensation. But money alone doesn't nourish the soul. Nor does having shelter and food. Starved of love, they will seek this love externally. To feel the rush of appreciation as they do something praise-worthy online, or in the conquest of others. But what does any of it mean if you cannot love yourself?

Society has always been about paying attention to the exceptional. Not necessarily the ones who have something to say, but rather those who can manage to draw attention. The more attention one draws, the more external love one receives. This is the rush that drives many to crave the road to fame and fortune. As an infantile longing back to that safe environment of one's childhood, whether real or imagined, where there are no worries and one is loved.

Yet without the ability to love oneself, none of that matters, and as the rush and excitement dies down, this stark realisation will hit home for too many. They're not loved for who they are, but for this role they play. This is why plagiarising other people's works is so tempting, and yet so dangerous. You may have gained those fifteen minutes of fame, but in the end you will have lost yourself.


Much has been written about the ideal ways in which to construct a society, and the framework for a fair and equal society and economy. Here it seems quite simple and straightforward: the ideal society is formed around the concept of self-love and through it the drive that everyone can live in an environment where this is possible.

This means no punishing (negative attention) to those who are having troubles surviving in society. This is very much the concept behind UBI, and also the tragic thing about what it tells us about society today: when people are given money with no strings attached, they will still ask 'what does this cost me?'. Because they have learned that outside of childhood, nothing is free and no one can be trusted.


The ideal society is one in which someone who can truly love themselves can say with conviction 'I love you' to others, to society and to every living and inanimate object in the world, thus enriching it with a true love for life itself.


Maya



[1] https://www.songteksten.nl/songteksten/40786/harrie-jekkers/ik-hou-van-mij.htm
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/07/altruism-is-anathema-to-humanism.html