The second great commandment is "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
as thyself.
can we just focus on that?
Two ways to think of this:
1. You cannot love others fully until you love yourself.
Have you ever just stopped and thought about that?
Can you really love someone with out loving yourself? May come as a shock to some of you, but, no. You can't. You can still have some appreciation and love and brotherhood with a person, but you can't really give up yourself for them. When you don't love yourself, every single relationship has at least some of you wondering, "what can they do for me? will they confirm my feelings? will they love me?" I don't think that's how real and true love works. It should be, "how can I make them feel better? what can I do to serve this person? what can I do to show them that I love them?" OK, if there are any guys reading this, this may come across as silly or stupid or whatever, (I have a sneaking suspicion that you guys do it to..) but I don't really care. Us girls a lot of times will randomly daydream of our future boyfriends or husbands. Like, about guys we've never even met. And not just "oh, he will be dark, tall, mysterious, and handsome" and stuff like that, but sometimes even scenarios, like "what would I say if this happened to my husband?" and stuff like that. now save that thought.
A lot of girls I know who don't fully love themselves are the ones who are craving a boyfriend. I think that inside they want someone to make them feel beautiful. I want that as much as the next girl, but when I imagine my future husband/boyfriend, a majority of the time, I'm helping them out. Comforting them,* healing them, loving them. I hope I'm not being to preachy. Yeah, sometimes I imagine them doing that for me, or just my friends in general telling me I'm loved, and stuff like that. But I find I only think about those things on the days I love myself less.
When you don't love yourself, all you can think about is you. Funny thing, when we love other people, they are all we can think about. But when we don't love ourselves, we are all we can think about.
"Love me and I will always be in your heart.
Hate me and I will always be on your mind."
Why don't we love ourselves? I don't have a perfect answer, but I think it has to do with the fact that we are the only people who think about how awful we are. When someone else has a short coming, it's easier to forgive them. We like to think good things about other people, especially friends.
But we don't forgive ourselves as much as our friends, do we? It's easy to not be nice to yourself. You worry about hurting other people's feelings, and you worry about other people hurting yours, but you never seem to worry about hurting yourself. Please don't hurt yourself. When you hurt yourself, you hurt the people who love you, whether they or you know it. You close off. They can't reach you. They see your pain and become saddened. Don't do that. As a great man, Deiter F. Uchdorf said,
Stop it.
Stop hurting yourself. Is it worth it?
No.
the second way:
II. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Yeah okay same wording. How does that even work?
this one is also kind of hard to explain. Love thy neighbor, being yourself. Don't pretend to be someone different. don't cover up who you are so that you can be "accepted". Just love them as they are and as you are. Don't try to win them over with things you can't do. Give your whole self, but don't try to reach beyond your capability. You shouldn't have to pretend to be able to do something just to have them in your life. As said time after time,
Just be yourself. Because that's not good enough, it's better than that. It's you.
*Okay, just to make it clear, I do not want to marry one of those guys who can't take care of themselves, are always upset if everything isn't "just so", and so forth. I just imagine helping them in time of need. Just thought I would clarify that.. any who. continue.
PS I know I had a lot more thoughts about this, so there may be a part II of this idea!
