What the World Needs Now

Who in the world didn’t start the life as a romantic? Nobody was born cynical, that I know. But what made us like this? And why is it the first thing that everybody rely on, yet the first thing to be cynical about is always love? Everywhere I hear the advice: love doesn’t last forever. Love is just some kind of lubricant to make the process of getting to know each other and adjustments easier, and then when it has to go, it went. Isn’t it a sad sad world we live in when something as grand as love is compared to KY Jelly or Durex Lubricant?

But what is happening along the way, when a couple started out so crazy in love with each other, could ended up bickering to no end and out of happiness that had been going on for years gave up by saying to each other: “I don’t think I ever loved you from the start?” Don’t anybody ever wonder what went wrong in between? I know, the answer may vary, you could say, it’s her fault or it’s his fault. Some might say, he’s changed but she never did. Or the contrary. There are some also would say that, they grow out of love. Like love is some kind of shoes we had when we were teenagers and someday we woke up from our sleep and it didn’t fit anymore. Love was here when we weren’t here. And it will be here when we’re not anymore. Love is always here, now and does exist. How can we outgrow love? It’s not possible.

So what’s wrong? Is there such a thing as ever lasting love, love that lasts and lasts forever? Or is it just a myth? Just a fairy tale that we heard from generations to generations so we tend to believe on its existence? Even though there’s no one ever witnessed it before? You may say that love between mother and child is that kind of love. But I would like to beg to differ. Mothers often love their children the ‘wrong’ way. The way that the children someday would blame their mothers on every complications and complexities in their lives. Some mothers disown their children. Some children outgrow and cannot stay in the same room with their mothers for more than 30 minutes. I know some that still love each other fiercely. But show me mother and child that love each other every day and I will show you 5 ‘children’ with mother issues.

So. What am I saying here? Am I proving that there is no such a love? Is love really an initial attraction to what people called a ‘companionship’? Truthfully, if you ask me NOW, I don’t find the word companionship attractive at all. When I hear that word, the image that come before my eyes is an old lady sitting in an armchair knitting, and an old man reading a newspaper in another armchair. They hardly talk to each other. They can tolerate each other, alright. They speak to each other gently, but they don’t have this joie de vivre that I would imagine I’d have even to my old age.

I do believe that there’s such a love that lasts and lasts forever until we die. It’s not easy to achieve this kind of love, that’s for sure. But once we have it, there’s nothing more beautiful and nothing make other things more beautiful. And you can have it forever! What IS that love? Here’s my theory: it’s the love we have for ourselves.

OK. Please erase that image of a lonely man with hand lotion and a bunch of scrunch up tissue in front of the TV in your head. Ew. Not that kind of love to yourself.

I know you hear this often: that you have to love yourself first to love others. Love thyself. Give yourself some love. But as everything else is, it’s easier said than done. Maybe I have to crack up some self-improvement, spiritual and psychology books to have the ‘correct’ definition. But I’ll try to define it from what I’ve experienced my whole life.

Loving yourself means: believing that you are worth it. You are worthy of the happiness, blessings, achievements and all the wonderful people who surround you. You are beautiful, you are intelligent, you don’t deserve to be miserable. You might argue with me: how come I am intelligent? I don’t know anything about mathematics, or astronomy, or computers? OK, at this point I may have a sudden urge to slap you but I wouldn’t. You’re intelligent on what and will count. Anyone in this world has his or her own role in this façade we call life. If you’re not good at math, then your role is not in math. Accept that. Accepting that we cannot be good at everything is a part of loving yourself. Getting rid of the grudge of past mistakes that people had befallen onto you is part of loving yourself. Please tell me that you are all aware that grudge and anger is a negative emotion? And who would hold onto such negative emotions gladly? Not if you love yourself. You’re much better than that. You’re heart is better off with overwhelmingly beautiful emotions. Your friends have wronged you in the past? So what? It’s most possible that with that kind of experience, you learned something so precious, you wouldn’t have learned it any other way. And in the end it’s a part of what made you, well, you!

Please consider this. If you have learned to love yourself, thoroughly, unconditionally, you won’t beat yourself silly over small mistakes, you will move on with the biggest smile (probably inside, if you’re afraid people might think you’re nuts), you will count your blessings every day, because if you consider it again, it is so overwhelming. Sometime we forgot that we have a roof above our heads, people who love us even though we often aren’t being our best self, we have food to eat, our books, our movies, our beds to curl up and sleep whenever we feel tired. I know that’s probably just the basic stuff, but if you see others who sleep on the street-side, probably inside a family buggy that also doubles as garbage disposal transportation during the day, you can count your blessings more. And when that sadness start to fill your heart again, tell yourself, you are worth those blessings! These things are given to you so you can make something that worth your while, worth people’s while. You are not going to let your life slip away like that and not doing something that you love. Fill your heart with happiness, with as much as positivity you can grab around you. And do whatever excites you the most.

I truly believe that if you make this a daily happenings, until it become a habit of loving yourself and not accepting anything less than being happy every day, you will attract nothing less than similar energy. That, my friend, is euphemism of similar people. People who have so much love for themselves in their hearts, the next rational thing for them to do is share this love to anyone else who are willing to be engulfed in it. People like these, like you, wouldn’t dream about making you unhappy. Why would they? Making you unhappy means making them unhappy. And they love themselves too much to make themselves unhappy. They will let you be you. They will let you do the things that excite you the most. As they will do theirs. We will be passionate about all the things around us. Or we will surround ourselves with things that we’re passionate about. And do the best; make the best outcome from it. We will share it with more and more people, until this bubble of happiness grows and grows and grows. And it will last and last. Oh yes it will. Because if you want to think of it, we can only tell ourselves what to do. We cannot possibly tell everyone else what to do and make them OK with us telling them what to do. You hear that, my ex-boss? (Sorry, can’t help it). So if we tell ourselves to love ourselves, why wouldn’t we love ourselves? It could only make us feel good. Nothing bad would come out of it. Only everything that is good in this world.

So, what then? Are we going to be shiny happy people, holding hands, skipping instead of walking, and bursting out show tunes no matter where we are? Hell, no, people, we are not characters out of Sound of Music. The beauty of loving ourselves is; we don’t have to declare it to the world! We don’t have to register to our nearest KUA and marry ourselves. We don’t have to tell that girl or guy who hit on us “I’m sorry, I’m taken. I’m in a fully committed relationship with myself.” Well maybe you can try, but make sure I’m there to witness that, because I believe that would be hilarious to see that girl/guy face.

Here’s the thing. We will continue our life as us. Our normal selves. It’s just the inside that changed. We would have this new pair of eyes when we see things. We would have a different point of view when we see a problem (or maybe you will be more comfortable to refer it as ‘challenge’ (feel free to barf)). We will take life as it is. No judgment necessary. We listen when we listen. We see when we see. We don’t pre-process what’s given to us. We just perceive. As it is. We will continue to steer away from things that don’t make us happy. And run towards the things that do. This is not me quoting ‘The Secret’ book because I haven’t read it. But that way, you are moving with the universe. So one day, you may find yourself in the right place, at the right time, with the right people and something great (not just good), GREAT will happen to you. You might not realize it instantly. But sooner or later you will. And you will have everything you ever wanted AND needed.

Here is something else I believe. I believe that the world has given us all the things that we ever wanted and needed. It’s either we block our self from them. Or our perception is so altered with the skepticism and cynicism so we couldn’t see it. And one way to get it and to see it is by moving towards loving yourself. We can only focus on what we want. It’s already there. The hows and whens are not our problem. I will give you a good example. I’m sorry if it comes from some chick flick I just watched.

There’s this woman. She just came out a nasty divorce where she was forced to give up her house, which she bought with her own money. Also renovated by his mother’s money. So to make her feel better and take her out from the slump, her friends bought her tickets for a tour to Tuscany. In Tuscany, she fell in love with a villa that happens to be on sale for quite an affordable price. So she bought it without second thought. Someday along the way, she came to realizations: why did she buy this villa? There were three other rooms that she worried would never be slept in, and a kitchen but no one to cook for. Then she confessed that she bought the villa because she’s tired of being afraid to dream. Because she still had a dream to be happy again. She wanted this villa to be filled with her family. She wanted a wedding to happen here too. The story went on. She waits and waits for Mr. Right yet no one worthy comes a long. Then something happens that pushed her to just focus on the house’s renovation until it’s done. When it’s done, the workers who have been working on her house have become her family and she cooked for them everyday, happily. The villa also housed a friend of hers who were pregnant and abandoned by the partner. And in the end, she become the hostess of a wedding of a young couple and then she met her Mr. Right. Maybe it was not the way she thought the dream to happen, but she had all her wishes! And it might not be her wedding and her true family, but she was so happy she couldn’t care less! Wait, where’s my tissue? Sniff

So, what do we have here? I’m sure you get my gist.