Most people think that love is some selfish and altruistic endeavor which is selfless and not about "you." I counter that this makes no sense at all. For before you can love other people you need to learn to love and accept yourself. In order to say you love someone else you need to first be able to say you love yourself. You need to be able to say "I" love you. Which means you need to be able to say "I" and love that "I" enough to know you are worthy of the love of the other in return.
If you do not love yourself when you are alone how will being with someone else make things better? The truth is it will not and you will never be happy if you are not happy with yourself. All good people should have self-love. They should be having self-respect and self-love. Obviously not all people are good people. Some people are downright evil individuals whom deserve to rot in their own personal hell for the type of person they are.
Most people out there can be good and thus can gain reasons to have self-love and respect. One needs to nurture the self, the I and then from there love can come in easily. I am open to love from another more than ever before because I know I am worthy. I love myself and the man I have become. I have rational selfishness and egoism in check. I have and continue to nurture my self, my I, my mind, my body and myself altogether.
Everyone needs to nurture themselves and work from there. I am still working on it, but, perfect is an illusion, so, I give up on ever being it. All I can be is me and anyone worthy of my returned love will love me for me. Will not demand I am some ideal that does not exist. They will accept me for me including all my human flaws. As perfect is not real it is a made up ghost we all seem to chase. However, there is no ghost to find and we are like dogs chasing our own tails. We need to turn inward to the self.
We need to nurture that and love the self first before all else. We should not sacrifice our self to find love for it would not be love. It would be a parasitic relationship like living with a leach draining your life from you. Slowly killing you and making you choose the option of death just to not be alone. No relationship is worth self-emulation and destruction. That is not love that is no better than serfdom, a personal hell or slavery even. Nurture the self; for if there ever was something one could call a Soul it is The Self, "I."
