Love Yourself And It Will Let Others Love You

I read a terrible news story a while ago about 13 children who had been starved and mistreated by the people meant to care for them. Hard to sit with. Kids come into the world wired to be loved and to love back. Every one of them is something singular, a flower or maybe a weed, but either way something that wants to open up and grow if the care is there. That child is you, once. We were never built to be copies of each other. Different people belong in different corners of life, with different work to do, and all of us carry a kind of value. The trouble is accepting it. Most of the time we need other people around us before we can believe it ourselves.

Jealousy poisons almost everything. We walk around convinced the supply is short, and love feels shortest of all. There's an old tale about Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies that gets at this. In the story a witch spread a rumor: each person held only so many Warm Fuzzies, so you'd better ration them for friends and family, the ones likely to hand some back. People started hoarding. That was exactly the plan, because once everyone turned stingy the witch could sell her Cold Pricklies, which looked identical to Warm Fuzzies but did none of the same work.

Counterfeit Pricklies leave you colder than before. The people handed enough of them can actually wither, some by turning on themselves for lack of self-love, some by fading from a lack of love coming at them from anyone else. So of course the reaction is: I can't go throwing my Warm Fuzzies around. What if none come back? Better keep the stash for the people who matter.

The part nobody tells you is backwards from that instinct. Give more love, give more Warm Fuzzies, and you end up holding more. Hold tight and give little, and you drain down to almost nothing. Underneath all of it sits the thing kept hidden: you are already worth loving. Believing that is most of how it becomes real.

Try a breathing exercise for it. Draw a breath in and let your belly push all the way out. Looks ungraceful, I know. Do it anyway. On that inhale picture yourself pulling in every bit of love floating around in the world, and on the exhale send love from inside you back out. Don't go hunting for where the love is coming from, just trust that it's there, and at first don't pin it to any particular person or thing. When you breathe out, don't panic that you're spending it. Letting it go is what multiplies it, and you'll find you have more to hand over than before.

Let your own light out, let yourself see what you already are, and the loving back tends to follow from the people around you. One line worth carrying with you: I choose to be happy while I wait for something good to happen.

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