Best-Of Advice

On learning to love yourself

How do you learn to love yourself? How do you “realize” that in your deepest of hearts you are worthy? I’ve been trying for years and after every new strategy or life-changing decision I always reach the same conclusion: I’m not. I could give you a list of reasons why I’m right to think that and I could give you a list of reasons why I’m stupid and wrong to think that. My reasoning tells me that the second list is me trying to lie to myself. How do you love the skin you’re in? How do you love your personality? How do you, coketalk, do it?

Stop all this “trying to learn to realize” bullshit. You’re tripping all over yourself with lists and strategy and reasoning. This isn’t a process for your ego or your rational mind. You’re not going to think your way into loving yourself.

Sorry to get all Yoda up in this bitch, but love or love not. There is no try.

The simple truth is that you are worthy of love. That goes for every last motherfucker on the planet. Whether you realize it or not is purely a matter of getting out of your own way.

Seriously, don’t you get how amazing it is to be alive? One day you won’t be. In the meantime, the skin you’re in will wither and age, your personality will ebb and flow, and everything around you will be in a constant state of flux. Ultimately, none of it really matters, except for those moments of joy you carve out for yourself, and you can only experience joy when you forget all the bullshit and remember that you really do love yourself after all.

This isn’t about self-confidence. It’s not even about self-acceptance really. That’s the fucking irony here. Loving yourself isn’t about the “self.” It’s a difficult concept to communicate. I’ve hinted at it before, but once you’ve had the experience of truly letting go of your ego, you’ll understand what I mean. There’s a freedom that comes in accepting in its totality both the extraordinary nature and fleeting insignificance of the human condition. For some reason, afterward, it’s really fucking easy to love yourself.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna start singing Kumbaya or some shit. You wanted to know how I did it, and that’s pretty much it. I guess all I’m trying to say is, it’s not that you ever really learn to love yourself. In the end, if you’re lucky, you just forget not to.

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One thought on “On learning to love yourself

  1. Haley says:

    Hey Coke, where is the “hinted” hyperlink supposed to go? I’m getting a “link not there error” and I’d like to read what you were referring to.

    Thanks!

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