[HBBC:1] Self-love

Welcome to The Half-Baked Bloggers Consortium‘s (HBBC) first post, where Nema, Maha Mohamed,Ammar Al-Majali, Rana Safi, Maryam, Yara Hani, Noha Hanafy, Noor Al Zubaidy, Nouran Ziad, Noor El terk, Salima Al Masrouri, Mariam Tarek, Sara Amr, Yasmine Fayez, Rania Khaled, Ibhog, Hagar Haggag, Abeer Zaki, Yomna Arbad, Salma M San, My Essam and I voice our opinions about a weekly topic chosen by any HBBC member. This weekend’s topic is Self-love, chosen by Nema.

There are numerous self-nouns, but there is some mystical appeal to the word ‘love’. Ai or Koi (for opposite sex) in Japanese. The word ‘Love’ is very sacred in Japan. In fact some Japanese have never used the phrase “I Love You” because of its profound meaning. They express their affection to something according to the nature of object of affection. For example, the word ‘aidokusho’ means one’s favorite book, ‘aikokushin’ patriotism, ‘hakuai’ philanthropy and ‘hatsukoi’ meaning first love. If you noticed all words contain either ai or koi. Don’t you just love how they related love to patriotism and philanthropy?

Anyway, enough straying away from the main topic. To be honest, I don’t know how to tackle such a topic. I mean, what is self-love anyways?

Brainstorming for the topic, I got the weirdest set of unrelated thoughts. Since, till now, I have no clear vision of what self-love is and how it can be tackled as a topic; I will only share some of the tattered thoughts I had.

Self-love.. Is it good or bad?

When I asked this question on Twitter I got the following answer,

“Depends..”

“Good when it becomes a motive to urself to be a better person in the way u act In life and with others, which is normal self-love… and it turns into ugly when u love urself more than anything in life "being selfish" and therefore, u may do bad things 2 be NO1”

And when I asked about how could someone love oneself adequately, I got this answer, “well, I think no one can love him/herself adequately cuz we all love ourselves more than others. But wait, we can work on this behavior to be in an acceptable form. i.e. Trying to invest that power of self-love only to do the appropriate things to our life. Without trying to do bad things to others to be better than them. Just to give us the necessary power to go ahead.” @AhmedR2fat on twitter.

There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else! – Donnie Darko.

Self-love = Self-appreciation? Self-esteem? Self-awareness? Selfishness?

… 

Sydney Carton

Remember that drunkard, self-pitying character from Dickens’ novel: A Tale of Two Cities? Can self-love be traded for somebody else’s love?  What if a person can’t love himself? What makes a person love/hate himself/herself?  Others’ praise? Self-praise? Love?

Sydney Carton substituted self-love for Lucie’s love. Sydney sure wasted his life; did other kids’ homework and didn’t do his; lived his entire life as a Jackal, but for those who believe, life isn’t the end of the story.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Could we compensate self-love for bigger causes and have significant ends for our lives? Do we have to sacrifice self-love to have that best rest like Sydney’s?

Sheldon Cooper

WTH?? I can’t control the flow of thoughts in mind, duh! Sheldon is a self-loving creature. The ‘bad’ type though.

So, love yourselves but not too much. Be number one but don’t take it for granted. Dream big, but be realistic. Be optimistic but don’t get too carried away with optimism. If only life was as meaningful as words spoken..or written.

This post is unrelated and sluggish but so are my thoughts. Please take the time to read what my half-baked buddies had posted about this topic. You won’t be disappointed. :)