I Am My Own Worst Enemy

That phrase has been heard often enough, I am my own worse enemy, but how many of us actually understand it? Last week in my seminary class I had a lesson on loving oneself, and it got me thinking how truly hard it is. It is easy to compliment others on their hair or their clothes, but when it comes to us we can’t seem to accept people’s compliments. We are our own worst critic, seeing every flaw even when they don’t exist. It is like the people who say that they are fat when they wear a size 2. That just bothers me.

I continued to think on it though. What does loving oneself truly mean? I have decided that it means that you respect your self for who you are, and you accept yourself for all the weaknesses and flaws that you have. When you love yourself you see your strengths as well as your weaknesses and you work hard to become all that you can be. Loving oneself it not egotistical, it does not give you rights to brag, it is to accept who you are, appreciate where you have been and what you have become.

When we have self respect then the whole world is open to us because we know that we can do anything. Even when we fail we can pick ourselves up once again because we are optimistic that things will change because we can do so.

Loving oneself is hard, it is not an easy journey to take, but I can only hope that once I reach that point, my love for others will grow as well as my love for God. Today I will stop being my own worse enemy and try to be my own best friend.

No Man is An Island . . .

"No man is an island unto himself." These famous words written by John Donne have been sticking in my mind for the past couple of days. I seem to find myself more and more alone lately as I hide in my room pouring over textbooks and writing essays, but the more I think about it, I can never be truly alone. I cannot hide away on my personal island, because even though I may shrink away from the shore, as soon as I look up I notice more and more islands besides me. This makes me exceptionally grateful to my friends and family who are always right besides me, supporting me, helping me.

Being alone, I think, is all an allusion. You can be surrounded by people but feel completely alone, or be all by yourself and reading an old letter written by a dear one and feel their love reach out to you over oceans and mountains, or even across just the street. Being alone, I think is a choice that we all make. We choose to be social, or to cast ourselves out of the group. True, some may take more effort than others, but in the end, we can't really blame people for ostracizing us because we chose it. If we really want to be apart of something, then we just have to do it. People are willing to welcome you if you make the effort to do so.

No man is an island because we are all a part of something much bigger. A community. A friendship. A family. Even if you don't feel like you belong, you do. People care about people and so they care about others, about you, about me.