love yourself

I have watched people and myself for many years before writing what I am about to write. Many, if not all, of the failures and misfortunes of our man come from his failure to love himself. It would seem, what’s the problem here? Everyone treats himself well or even excellently, we are all, after all, reasonable or unreasonable egoists.

But this is not about that.

The second commandment of Christ “Love your neighbor as yourself” turned out to be not only unreasonably difficult, but also not fully understood. Only the first part of the phrase, “Love your neighbor,” seemed verbal, that is, effective, requiring effort. And «himself» lingered in the passive shadow, as a matter of course. It wasn’t there.

The petitioner in the office or in the office apologizes a thousand times, looks at everyone with prepared loving eyes, jumps helpfully with a lighter. The guy with glasses fusses in front of the elevator, lets everyone in, lets everyone in, and once again remains alone in front of the call button. Grandmother in the market asks to weigh her four potatoes (here, dear). The ruddy girl at first does not notice her, then nevertheless decides to explain herself: “Well, why are you looking at me like a worm at a vegetable? Yes, I won’t bend my ass for four potatoes. ”

And the old woman (what a horror!) didn’t get angry, didn’t even take offense, but nodded understandingly, a little ingratiatingly, but outwardly sharp-witted, making it clear that she was able to appreciate the burdensomeness of her request, and said: “I’ll also take carrots.”

• V. Petrova “How to protect yourself from rudeness. 7 simple rules»

The years of tsarism, then Stalinism and all forms of Sovietism, I understand. They say: slave psychology. Or just a harsh, repressive upbringing in the family. Everything is possible. But I want to go the other way: we do not know how to love ourselves.

Here is another row. Two comrades are talking cheerfully in the middle of the sidewalk, they are bypassed along the roadway. These certainly value only themselves, only themselves and love. A cheerful old woman scatters the crowd, moving towards the counter or to the steps of the minibus. Does she not love herself? The saleswoman, or the secretary, or the person in the service window, chatting nicely with someone about the mushroom season, about the “terrible” hat in the neighboring boutique, about yesterday’s weekend, with amazing restraint ignoring the excited line. So how do you think she feels about herself?

All this is obvious. It is also obvious that the gospel commandment speaks of something else.

Loving yourself is not narcissism, not love for your appearance, flesh, for your autonomous space. It is love for the best in oneself, for the lofty, if you will. We are most often noble in our thoughts, worse in our actions, but, having loved thoughts, we give them, as it were, the reality of actions, and there is hope that they will turn into actions if we love and appreciate them. Then we will be able to love the other for the best, even if not realized yet. We will evaluate it on the scale of our own aspirations. And so what, a bad person seeks and finds justifications and meanings in his behavior. It is not hard. His paradise is in a hole of deceit and crookedness. The remarkable thinker of the XNUMXth century Ukhtomsky once said: “A rogue and a deceiver will see a rogue and a deceiver even when Socrates or Christ passes in front of him: he is not able to recognize Socrates or Christ even when he is face to face with them.” That’s where the focus is!

The green traffic light goes out faster than a person with a stick or a child can cross the road. People humbly pass the avenue skipping. Who measured this time?

The turntable in the subway hits the passengers at the causal place. Who so cleverly measured its height? The doors to the subway are closing, cutting through the crowd.

A seductive woman tapped her heels along the corridor, in a rustling short dress, with gold bracelets on her wrists, and she came out of the office, extinct. She has just been issued a pension certificate “for old age”.

This is petty and major rudeness at every turn. This is where civil society should intervene, here they are talking about dignity, about the humanization of the social sphere, about human rights. All, of course, so. But both human rights and dignity are a consequence. One must first love oneself. The absence of this feeling cannot be hidden either by outrageous behavior, or arrogance, or gaiety, or politeness. People unmistakably define a person who, in his depths, is ready for neglect and even humiliation.

An amazing episode was preserved in Pushkin’s notes: “I met Nadezhdin at Pogodin’s. He seemed to me very common, vulgar, boring, arrogant and without any decency. For example, he picked up a handkerchief that I had dropped.

It would seem that there is something shameful? Give a handkerchief to Pushkin. But the poet has a sharp eye for the quality of a person who does not love himself and is ready for humiliation.