Do You Love Yourself?

What if we don't love ourselves?

In this week's Gospel, Jesus tells us that all the commandments, prophecies, rules and regulations, rituals, prayers, art, and architecture that we call religion comes down to two things: We are to love one another as the best way to love God, and we are to love God as the best way to understand how to love one another.

But he asks us to love one another as we love ourselves. This raises the question of self-love: What does it mean to love ourselves?

Self-love is not just self esteem, and that's a good thing. Multiple studies have shown that self-esteem is not strongly correlated with good romantic and marital relationships. While healthy self-esteem is still important, self-compassion is more strongly correlated with successful relationships.

Self-compassion encompasses accepting all facets of oneself, even the uncomfortable ones, and providing care during moments of despair or withdrawal. Its three main components are: self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness. Self-kindness involves being understanding and caring towards oneself in times of suffering, rather than blaming oneself for life's challenges.

Loving oneself also acknowledges the shared human experience, recognizing that everyone encounters failure and imperfection. Instead of feeling isolated during tough times, it fosters connection with others. It entails maintaining balanced awareness of painful experiences in the present moment.

Above all, it means embracing the simultaneous truths that you are already enough, yet you still need to grow and change to become a better version of yourself.

This psychological literature suggests that Jesus saying has a double meaning. You must love your neighbor as much as yourself, but you must also love yourself in the same ways you are called to love your neighbor: with patience, kindness, generosity, humility, justice, temperance, forgiveness and honesty.

Kristin D. Neff and S. Natasha Beretvas 2012. The Role of Self-compassion in Romantic Relationships. Self and Identity: 1–21

Photo by Ismael Sánchez