To love.
To love?
To love.
What does it look like to love? What does it feel like to love? What is it to be love? As in, know love? For our Selves? For your Self?
The theme of love is ever-present in my spirit, psyche, intellect, and heart and always has been. Naturally, as someone raised in the Christian faith, “God is love” after all. And out of faith, hope, and love, the “greatest of these is love”. And outside of that, love has always been in the air, as the song says. From our earliest days of socialisation, people around us are trying to give love, show love, and be loved as best they can. Sometimes they fall short, sometimes they are so far off the mark that they’re toxic and harmful, and other times? Well, they succeed. They do it well, and we can be left trying to figure out how to do it well, too, not just for others but for our Selves.
And it can be within these (en)tangled attempts of loving that we begin to differentiate between the various types of love. I mean more than romantic love versus platonic love versus the other kinds between and outside these two main categories. By this, I mean love versus love. I am not the first to have thought through this distinction. We have, after all, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of discourses and analyses and interpretations spanning spiritual theologies, cul-tural cosmologies, and intellectual epistemologies. I’m sure that exploring the ‘concept’ of love weighs on every beating heart in this universe. And ever since when I was around ten years old, I became aware that love towards our Self can – and does – exist. I’ve been on the journey of exploration, making mistakes and going through toxic terrain. Now, at the young-oldish age of 24, I can also see that I’ve been through some flourishing meadows and can reconcile the good of what I’ve personally learned – and am still learning – with the messages of what I, and we, are taught about love towards one’s Self.
Now, love is something I’ve been well-educated on. We all have (even if we don’t realise it). We’ve seen the movies, read the books, heard the stories, podcasts, and endless explanations about how to find it (and keep it). But love? Not so much. It’s a not-so-familiar figure, an ac-quaintance. Like someone you’ve heard so much about but are yet to meet and get to know yourself.
To me, love is the big, grand superstar that everybody knows and talks about; she’s the theory, the theology, the ontology, and the philosophy. She’s the feeling, the ethic, and the idea. She’s the ambition and the goal to strive for. Because of this, she is also a god and an idol – a sweet angel and a raging beast. An all-consuming fire that awaits to devour us if we open our Selves up to her, but she’ll do it oh so sweetly because that’s what the feeling of love is and must be. Or so we’re told.
Love is a paradox, a Pandora’s Box. She’s a brand and a caricature and is as fickle as the wind, and no more can you grasp the wind than you can grasp love. And that seems to be the message: as soon as you think you have her, she’s slipped out of your fingers, and you’re longing – yearn-ing – for her to come back, to find her again.
Except, she was never there in the first place; it was an illusion. She is an illusion. This kind of love is unsustainable, yet it’s what the normative model is. In this era of self-love, the fairy-like, whimsical, idyllic, yet parasitic model of love has been encompassed in discourse, practice, and praxis of love towards the Self. We are both the Prince and the Princess, the hero and the dam-sel in distress in the weird love stories about the Self and the Self. Like in the traditional fairy-tale model of love, both the hero and the damsel in distress are problematic somehow. The hero, in terms of toxic masculinity and patriarchy and the damsel in distress in terms of toxic femi-ninity and, yes, patriarchy.
I’ve been thinking of how discourse on self-love/love towards the Self mirrors this. I liken the ‘old Self’ (or, rather, current Self) to the damsel in distress and the new and improved Self (the one we try to self-Love ourselves into) as the hero. We don’t have to look far to see this simile as a real-life phenomenon; all we have to do is open Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and wit-ness all the ‘before and after stories, as well as listen to how people talk about their journeys to self-Love and what love of the Self means to them. When we watch and listen closely, what becomes apparent?
What is particularly striking is how the self-Love(d) Self is comparable to a hero who thinks they’re saving the day. They are self-righteous, believe themselves to be morally superior, and expect the damsel to be ever grateful to them because they needed help, and help has come. And that is the epitome of the rhetoric of love we’re being socialised in; it is loud, egotistical, and harmfully proud. It is also implicitly hateful, entitled, and arrogant.
When we love our Selves in this kind of love, we end up perpetuating the unhealthy and toxic relationship(s) we had with all our Selves because, in this love, there is no egalitarianism or mu-tual respect and appreciation. The power imbalance remains, except this time, the sneering and condescension masked in the rhetoric of love aren’t coming from an Other but from our Self to our Selves. This time, we’re the ones beating our Selves up if we ‘miss’ a self-love or self-care appointment. This time, we’re screaming “YOU DON’T LOVE ME” at our Selves because we don’t meet the standards and expectations set by the economy of self-Love and its enforcers (i.e., influencers, social media personalities, fully-fledged celebrities, various markets, etc.).
And this is why we’re seeing that the new wave of self-love isn’t helping us but worsens our identity and low self-esteem issues. Even though we’re moving past the shallow concept of self-love as bubble baths and face masks, the new economy of self-love is ultimately built on this parasitic, exhausting premise of love. It is so far from instilling in us a healthy understanding of ways of loving our whole Selves, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
But love? The love I’m talking about is the stillness outside the chaos and franticness of love. More than a feeling, it’s praxis and an embodiment – a joy, contentment, a way of being. Be-yond the strife, the forcefulness, the noise and the complexity is simplicity. It’s a softness, a kindness, a quietness, and a gentleness. It’s a slow, soft, melodic rhythm of grace, a textured whisper that is warm, loving, and unforced. It is not loud or boastful, nor is it selfish or self-flagellating. The love I’m talking about is an authenticity that I cannot reasonably describe. Though we try, we don’t quite have the words to accurately articulate what it is – much like, I believe, the kind of love that God herself is and represents. It cannot be bought and does not spring forth from any purchase, material or otherwise. It cannot be capitalised because it is en-tirely outside the realm of capitalism. Still, it also cannot be forced by goodwill. It is not for sale or exchange; it is not some form of currency or capital. Yet, neither can it be taught (from a pulpit, a book, or an Instagram caption) or caught (like some wave of inspiration).
I’m talking about the kind of love of Self – and towards the Self can only be uncovered. Like a hidden treasure buried beneath a mound piling up, getting heavier and heavier, or a priceless inheritance was stolen at birth unbeknownst to us. This love of Self is already there. We don’t need saving or rescuing. It’s just been taken from us.
Deeply embedded and intricately intertwined in the magic and mystery of our beings, this love of Self is a birthright – it’s a part of us. And just like no one is born hating another per-son. We are not born hating our Selves; this hatred, dislike, disdain, and apathy towards our Self is socialised into and onto us. Like every capitalist, patriarchal, colonial, and devilish lie, we’re told we can find it in some system and advised to look everywhere but within our current Selves. And, even when they tell us “it’s within you”, we (in)conveniently have to use their sys-tems and their channels and tools – one of them being a reincarnation of a fairy-tale hero in the shape and form of our (future) Self who needs to come and rescue our present Self. There is no freedom in this, only illusions and chronic dependency packaged as one thing or another.
So, I ask: who is in your Self? What is in your Self? Which springs are we drawing from to wa-ter our Selves? Which mirrors- and whose mirrors- are we using to view our Selves, to construct our Selves? Are we operating in the volatile economy of love or the tender paradigm of love? Whose standards are we using to love our Selves with? And do we think a new Self can ‘rescue’ our current Self?
To love.
To love?
To love.
What does it look like to love? What does it feel like to love? What is it to be love? As in, actu-ally, know love? For our Selves? For your Self?
