self-love & hatred
The other day I had one of those long overdue catch ups with a very good friend of mine. Our conversations always end up having a philosophical element to them & an analysis on life. Great conversations often involve life lessons that you don't realise are lessons & one particular topic that got discussed was self-growth, especially recognising when we are wrong.
We both have our fair share of narcissistic people in our lives & the main thing that winds us both up is when a narcissistic person deflects all the blame on everyone else but themselves; they have an inability to self-reflect, admit that they’re wrong & utilise that experience to grow into a better person. The reality is that in their eyes there is no truth but their own & no other side to the story.
"These things take time & if anything it’s a life long journey when it comes to self-love & growth."
For centuries, one of the biggest questions of life is why are we here & what is our purpose? Without looking at it with too much complexity, self-growth is probably the most important thing, in my opinion: self-growth is self-love. This type of self-love looks after us mentally & physically without even needing to think about it. To put it into perspective, all negative energy that we hold onto, such as grudges, bounces back into our lives. The longer we hold onto all negativity, the more our outlook on life & our reactions towards others/ourselves will stay negative.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should let people who have done us wrong back into our lives, but you can very easily forgive & forget by reflecting on life, seeing that there’s always two sides to every story & you may as well discard those negative feelings you’ve had, so that you can move on & begin to heal.
Speaking of narcissism earlier, we more than likely all have some of it within us. Sometimes I think it grows within us as a defence mechanism & there are times that I’ve reflected back on my own actions & thought “shit, what an absolute prick” about myself, but I’ve always tried my best to learn from it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten through childhood trauma, bullying, unhealthy relationships, health issues, injuries, you name it. I’ve learned to accept that you can’t have good & bad without the other.
My very first tattoo was a big reminder of experiencing the good & bad. During my teenage years when I really began to experience depression I was also studying Religion & Philosophy at college. I learned about Plato & his ideals, what’s the meaning of life, is evil really evil & is good really good? The one idea that I really took on was Plato’s concept of ideals. We know that a table is a table because there is an ultrauniverse beyond our space & time that has a table & we come from this world, hence why we know a table is a table. I know it sounds silly because I also questioned how that other world knows it’s a table too? But this idea of mirroring is what I took on, the attraction of opposites, you can’t have up without down & love without hate. When it comes to emotions & ideas, there’ll always be an opposite.
My first tattoo was a yin yang on my right wrist. This was because when I’d be crying or having a sad moment with my head held in my hands, I’d get a glimpse of the yin yang & remember that within white there is black & vice versa; within pain there is happiness, within good there is bad & within those dark moments there’ll be light moments. I’d feel better knowing that the bad moment will end & there’ll be good. It would also remind me to prepare for the bad even when I was feeling good & I’m not saying this was a complete form of therapy but it was a small trigger I gave myself that got me through things.
Back to reflecting on life…nothing is an overnight cure. These things take time & if anything it’s a life long journey when it comes to self-love & growth. My granddad always told me that hate is a very strong word & shouldn’t be used. Hatred holds so much power that it can consume your soul & take over your approach to life & his lesson forever rings true to me. Without self-reflection & analysis we’ll be stuck in the same place. A bit of fearlessness in admitting you’re wrong can take you a long way & shed a burden of guilt that we may feel.
Rhéa x
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