Do i love myself?
Recently my dear-to-my-heart friend & neighbor asked me the question.
“What an odd question this actually is”, i thought to myself.
Do i love the earth under my feet, the sun and the moon, the stars?
They are reality and so am I.
So do i love myself?
I think we rather should find a new definition of “Love”.
I certainly don’t hate myself ; )
I certainly don’t not like myself.
I certainly don’t doubt myself.
I certainly don’t look at myself with a critical, self-depreciating eye that constantly tries to find something to improve and “make-better”.
I certainly don’t love myself in a narcissistic or self-glorifying way.
I don’t pat myself on the shoulder and tell myself how great i am ten times a day.
I don’t make selfies ; )
I AM … thats as solid to me as the sun and the earth.
I guess forty years of meditation have paid off.
I know who I Am.
And i also know my persona pretty well.
Where i live inside of me is pretty spacious, pretty wide & peaceful & free.
Full and empty at once.
Happiness is there like the air.
This is the solid ground onto which i stand.
There is nothing to love or not.
It IS.
And i know that I AM THAT.
And from “there” i look at the person that i made of myself, that i became in the world.
My playground.
And that’s a ever becoming and ever evolving reality.
A reality that is not solid, thats playful and changeable, thats … interesting.
What is there not to love about it?
With over sixty years on my back i have learned enough of my personal self – through continuous self observation and through feedback from the world – to be able to cast a humorous and forgiving eye on my quirks and shortcomings.
A couple of missing teeth, not the greatest interest in insurance and personal possessions, always make a mess when i eat : ), not too much concerned what people think about me, love burping, a tendency to overrun people with my intensity, prone to occasional angry rants … and so on.
Well, there is always room for improvement of such charming traits ; )
But this does not stop myself from “loving myself”.
Definitely not.
Loving myself for me is not “looking at myself with pink glasses on”.
It rather means closely looking at my self constantly and clearly and with interest, looking myself in the eye and embracing what i see.
Being one with what there is.
Being myself.
And with myself, there is a lot to see.
“I” am quite a character : ).
Quite a self-aware, self-confident, self-educated, self-directed and self-actualizing interesting person.
“I” have many facets and have explored quite a number of them in different periods of my life, distinctly different lives within this one lifetime.
“I” have put on the hat of an electronic engineer one time and of a preschool teacher at another. Of a wood-artist and toymaker and wooden furniture maker, of intentional community builder and seminar leader, of counselor and life coach and teacher of spiritual matters. Not to mention the couple of odd jobs that i did to earn a few dollars.
I also spent a considerable amount of time teaching myself the ins and outs of web design, making numerous websites for money & the fun of it.
“I” have taught myself the coding languages of html, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), Javascript, jQuery, Processing, some parts of PHP and – of course – the WordPress Content Management System.
“I” can do many a thing with coding on the world wide web.
I can make crazy animations based on mathematics, randomness and even some pseudo artificial intelligence.
And i have done many many such projects for the pure fun & creativity of it.
Playfulness.
“I” can also make serious websites and serve the needs & wishes of my web design clients (to some extent ; )
“I” can also go very crazy with coding and make experimental sound-installations and modular synthesizers in the browser.
“I” can do that for the sheer interest and learning and the joy of making something from scratch, from an idea.
“I” am very handy with computers and programs, have probably 100 programs on my computer that i can handle when i need them for specific tasks, maybe 20 of them i know inside and out.
“I” can do a lot with Photoshop, i can make a simple photos shine and get some artistic touch.
“I” did a lot of photography and showed some of them to the world in exhibitions and on my websites.
“I” also write on my blog, share reflections and thoughts and insights and pictures, poems and essays, share pieces of my Self openly with the world.
“I” can play a decent guitar and even sing when i am in the mood.
And “I” have a collection of music on my hard drive that goes close to 1000 CDs and proves my broad musical tastes.
“I” also have a few talents and skills to help people in psychologic difficulties and existential crisis.
“I” can inspire people to get out of their inertia and small mindedness and make something interesting of their lives. Create vision, follow their dreams.
“I” can even get them to pay my for that : )
“I” have a deep empathy and compassion and intuition and eye for the potential of people.
For their soul.
“I” have a lot of love and tenderness for the people who are close to me, who allow me to share the life with them in a more comprehensive and consistent way.
“I” also have a lot of freedom and independence and the ability to be happy with myself.
To go my own way.
“I” have a lot of stuff that i can talk about and a lot of opinions about a lot of things.
“I” am pretty informed about whats going on in the world and the wrongs of society and the crisis of mankind.
I live with open eyes.
I live in the here and now.
I AM SOUL who is exploring the world and contributing to it thru the different facets of my personality.
I AM.
So … do I love myself?
Guess what!
I think we should really find a new word for “Love”.
