My Worst Enemy

My Worst Enemy

Who is the person who has tried the hardest to make you feel bad about yourself? Who is the person who has been the meanest to you, put you down the most, criticized you the most? Is there a name or a face in your mind? I have one, and there is no contest. That person is me. Yes, there have been lots of other people in my life who have bullied, mocked, insulted, and rejected me, making me feel like I was less valuable than them, but yet none of them has been as harsh to me as I have been. I may choose to believe the things that others say about me, but at the end of the day the person who is condemning me is me.

The Bible says that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself, but I will tell you that if I loved others the way I have loved myself, I would have no friends at all. Can you relate to that statement? There is an old adage that says you cannot love someone else until you can love yourself, and certainly how you feel about yourself will impact how you treat others, but the truth is that we tend to believe what is reflected back at us from other people. It would be more accurate to say that it is very hard to learn to love yourself if you have not been treated as if you are lovable, and far too often the image we see of ourselves in other people’s eyes is born of judgement, criticism, bullying, etc. So maybe at least part of the truth is really that you can learn to love yourself by loving others…

So what does it mean, to love yourself, and what does that look like? For generations there has been a pretty universal message in the media and advertising world that love is a feeling, or maybe the expression of a feeling, which of course is then tied to how much we spend to show that love. I looked online for a definition of love, and there are as many definitions of love as there are websites that give one, but almost universally the definitions are based around having positive feelings about someone, caring about someone, wanting to be around someone. All about feelings, and not about action, but love is not a thing; it’s a verb. Love is an action. To “love” someone is meaningless without action, just as there is a difference between “care about” and “care for”. Imagine if love were no different than being excited. The problem with seeing love as a feeling is that feelings are transitory and they can appear and disappear as our circumstances change. In many circumstances we don’t even have control over what we feel. We only have control over what we do about it. In fact, when the Bible says to love your neighbour as yourself it uses a Greek word, agapao, which has only a verb tense. Love is lived out through action, not through emotion. There is a different Greek word that means to care about.

So, love is an action. When you think about it, that makes perfect sense, because if love were just a feeling it would be fickle and unsustainable. When we say “I love you”, whether to someone else or to ourselves, it should really mean “I am committed to loving you”, not just “I have deep positive feelings about you”. So how do you show yourself love? If we were to use the media as the guide it would mean to buy ourselves expensive gifts and chocolate and flowers. I think we all know, however, that there is no truth to that. We have probably all either experienced or known someone who experienced hearing the words “I love you”, and/or received big gifts, but were then abused, or taken advantage of, or mistreated or cheated on etc. Love must be an action, which means it must be a choice, or it is not love. In my case, for example, when I do something that doesn’t live up to my expectations of what I should be able to do, I call myself names, like “dumbass” or “moron”. Is that love? Of course not. When I screw up, do I forgive myself and offer myself grace? Of course not. I browbeat myself with insults and make sure I let myself know I have let me down. I abuse myself for not meeting an impossible standard, and in many ways this is really just a surface reflection of how I have taken to heart the attacks of others and treated myself as if they were true.

When we are in a relationship, whether friendship or partnership, we do not always feel positively toward each other. We make mistakes, we hurt each other, and we are often deeply wounded, but because we care about each other and the relationship is important to us, we work to resolve those hurts and mend the relationship. I tell my kids that they should do the best they can to be the best self they can be. Then, when they make a mistake or hurt someone, they should take ownership of what they have done, accept responsibility for their mistake, and do their best to try to make amends for what they did. Then they once again try to be the best self they can be. That is the most that anyone can expect of them, and the best they can expect of themselves. Choosing to live by that model, and by offering grace to the other person in the relationship when the mistake is theirs, is what loving someone you care about is built around, and living it out is where caring for that person is put into practice. As strange as it may seem, you are in a way in a relationship with yourself, and the same principle applies. So maybe the next time you look at yourself in the mirror think of the “golden rule”, but turn it around and make it specific – love yourself the way you wished others would love you, and then you will be able to love others the way you love yourself.