New Years Intention 2014: "Love your neighbor as yourself".

"Love your neighbor as yourself". 

I have long been intrigued by this verse.  While popular, I often find these words to be misunderstood.  I hear people use these words to compel their loved ones to be kind, compassionate, and generous to others.  And while I wholeheartedly agree with this intention, I've witnessed many people live out these words to the neglect of themselves.  I've heard people say, "Scripture tells me to love my neighbor... it says nothing about loving myself".  I beg to differ.

The verse says: "love your neighbor as yourself", the imperative word here being "as".  The long form of this phrase would be "love your neighbor as you love yourself".  This means that in order to be kind, compassionate, and generous to our neighbor, we must first be these things to ourselves.  Think about it.  If you are invited to love someone as you love yourself this means that if you dislike yourself you are to dislike that someone, if you are cruel to yourself, then you are to be cruel to that someone.  Conversely, if you cherish yourself then to others you are invited to do likewise.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  This verse assumes that we love ourselves, which I find to be a rather large assumption.

I know a lot of people who are good at judging themselves.  I know people who criticize themselves or call themselves names.  I even know people who appear pretty self-satisfied on the outside but are masking an extremely low sense of self-worth on the inside.  I do know some people who kind of like themselves and are generally okay with themselves, but I know only a few people who really seem to accept and love their full selves, flaws and all.  

My yoga instructor this evening highlighted this idea when he admonished us to spend 2014 putting ourselves first, to move ourselves to "the top of the list" as he put it.  This isn't because he is secretly trying to breed narcissists.  It's because he knows deeply that if we are to have the energy, empathy, strength and passion that we so want to put back into the world we must first give it to ourselves.  We must nurture ourselves in order to nurture our loved ones... and our neighbors.  He also reflected that unless we love ourselves unconditionally, we cannot freely or aptly love others. 

I don't know what it looks like for you to practice loving yourself, or practice self-cherishing as I like to call it.  Perhaps it starts by forgiving yourself when you are sometimes impatient, or asking yourself what you really want to do on a Friday night, or taking 30min every day to do one thing that you deeply enjoy.  Whatever it may be, I encourage you to give yourself permission to do it and not apologize for it.

I think this world needs more people who aren't afraid of caring for themselves.  The people I know who practice taking care of themselves are some of the most genuine, generous, and delightful people I have been blessed to come into contact with.  Maybe it's because learning how to love themselves opened them up to loving others, including me, wholeheartedly.

As for me, what do I want for 2014?  How am I going to practice self-cherishing?  I'm going to start with trying to lay down any residual guilt for being who I am, valuing what I value, or wanting what I want.  And then, I'm going to try to be intentional about making 2014 about creativity, courage, and compassion.  Why those three things, you may ask. 

Simply because I want to.