Sit and Think

If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not able of developing compassion for others.

- The Dalai Lama

 

I rarely go to Lauks Nest.  It is a place of very specific private meaning to me, full of my own memories.  Therefore, it was the only place I could go to consider, in depth, myself.

I don't think I like what I find.

But there is someone who thinks much more of me than I think of myself, and I have to consider that they may be right.  I could not think, could not comprehend, that they could be lying to me, when they say how I am loved.  Therefore, logic says either they are telling the truth, and I am more than I think, or they are lying, and I am exactly how I think, and I already know they cannot be lying.

So, I must learn to love myself as much as they do, that I may understand what it is to be worthy of that depth of love.  It's the only fair thing to do.

 

I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it -- I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know -- but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.

- Virginia Satir