It is a weird world, and I am a weird person.

How many times have we heard of self love these days? It’s a weird phenomenon. We are constantly reminded of the lack of it. We laugh, we cry, we get angry, we get upset, because we don’t have enough of it.

I am a weird person. I am weird in a way because I sometimes look at things that gets people emotional and study them (but get really emotional about non-emotional things such as plastic bottles and polyester clothing). I read the word #selflove. It seems to be a fleeting concept. We see it on everywhere. We talk about it, we see it on Instagram, on marketing campaigns, on blogs. It is in photos, in cafes, and probably in our diaries.

So what is self love? I don’t recall reading this when I was young. The retired (and perhaps incorrect) linguist in me says: a concept wasn’t there if there was no word for it. So really, when did we start to create a concept of self love?

Do people back then have no self love? Or are we being increasingly convinced that we don’t have enough love for ourselves? Is it that we take comfort in it from the increasingly critical world? In that sense, being critical and judgmental to one another is the issue, not the lack of self love. But who’s to blame for being critical and judgmental? We all are.

So here’s my hypothesis. In the age of social media, we are totally transparent with our lifestyle. We’re so ‘close’ to one another - we look at each other’s life every single day. Yet we’re so distant - we don’t see each other, talk to each other face to face. We can say meaner stuff about other people knowing that we can escape saying that in the face. We have not become more critical. We just have more things to be critical about, and it just got easier to be criticised.

But why do we need self love to begin with? Are we unable to breath and blink because we’ve got no self love? We admire babies when they take that ‘leap of faith’ to walk to the edge of the bed, but they ain’t got any #selflove to empower them. Are they unable to laugh when they’re happy or rest when they’re sad because they’ve got no sense of #selflove?

We simply choose to go for #selflove because we like to be in a space where we can be ourselves and escape from (sometimes unnecessary) criticisms. Or is it a heartwarming comfort that we are now empowered to do things that makes us feel good that we’ve always wanted to but don’t have to courage to do? In some cases, #selflove is a creative transformation of an innate human need, it is never THE human insight that we need self love. We’re always chasing something else.

The geek in me then googled what ‘self love’ means. That “a person first needs to love oneself in the way of respecting oneself and knowing oneself (e.g. being realistic and honest about one's strengths and weaknesses).” - and there are a lot more definitions to it, so take what you want.

So hey, instead of the embracing self love, we should be actively taking away the things that make us feel we need self love. The justification of us lacking something only reinforces the need of it. ♥️

(P.S. if you’re just taking self-love as an excuse to rest and stay in, you’re probably doing it right, and everything above probably don’t apply to you. Just drink more water and go to bed early. ☕️✨☺️)