Love yourself to love someone else!!

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

We live in a country where we are guarded by our loving parents throughout. The only thing we learn since our birth is to love others to get love in our life! To first love our parents, to love our teachers, to love our neighbors and what not. But never did anyone taught us to love and embrace our self first! That's kind of strange as we only get to understand the importance of loving oneself with time and all by ourselves! 

Most of the Indian Parent is very protective with their children which leads to a lot of deception in the young minds and when suddenly the reality hits many of us fails to understand the reason. This leads to broken soul, depression, DE-motivation etc. But that is how life is I believe. We see the different sides and we take time to see it, explore it and finally understand it!!

Talking about understanding LIFE I realized that we define life in a vague way. We think we run our life but actually we are just defining the path of our life. The path that leads to create something worth living for. In this journey of continuous creation what we leave behind is loving our self. We start giving too much importance to a person or a thing or even some materialistic stuff and end up losing our own self at the end. It is not our mistake as we have been taught this way of always giving and not expecting anything in return. But my dear folks the truth is we always do this with an immense expectation of getting the same response in return and here starts the problem!

Suppose from tomorrow YOU do something just because you love it and not for that person or thing. I bet you will feel great because trust me we expect nothing from our self as we do not love our self enough to actually do something for our self. We even stop practicing our own passions because we try to please someone else. Not every time for the person we love, it is also applicable in our work place where we continuously try to please our Boss/Management and not love the job we are doing all because we want to live a life we have seen and not create a life we want our self.

But you know what, with time and experience we end up learning how to love ourselves as in the end, when the light dims and the silence peeps in, we deep down know and realize what and where our happiness belongs. There comes a day when we say "I love myself enough to let all the negativity go" and then those unsecured negativity becomes our strength. It happens with every single soul on this planet. The only difference being how early we grasp the truth and enhance our living. 

I love myself a lot and I am not writing this because of myself but because of a lot of people I know. I would like to share few instances see if you can find your own reflection:

1.             I know a girl who thinks and believes that it is OK to forget about your own dreams to just please a family who is selling their son to them! I mean how could you even dream of it? How could you accept this fact and end up saying: "Hamare mein aisa hi hota hai aur hamesha se yehi hua hai. Main bhi wahi kar rahi hoon jo sab kiye hai" {It is like this only in our religion. I am also doing the same what everybody has done before!

•       Like seriously! Is it so important to marry a person and accept a family just because everybody has done it before! Dude you need a doctor is all what I feel.

2.       I know a guy who is giving his day and night to his Boss just because that person wants to spend some quality time with his family forgetting that this person too have one. You can pay a person but you cannot buy his family out of it. Accepting this kind of work culture make my friend a dumb ass who keeps saying : "Eo taka emni emni daye na. Kaaj korte hoy gadhar moto age barar jonno" {They simply don't give salary. You will have to work like an Ass to grow in the company.}

•      Okay! I doubt your sexuality! You can be an ASS to please your Boss who is a Male!!

3.      I have seen few parents asking their children to take up a field because that is what every body is studying and not doing something that they love because there is no certainity. I have heard those parents saying: "Arey wo toh movie hai jaha IIT se Wldlife photographer ban jaate hai. Yeh zindagi hai...Yaha 13L ka loan liya hua hai.. Hum kya ghar bhech de iske startup k wajah se?" {That was a movie where a person from IIT became a Wildlife Photographer. Here we have taken a loan of 13L so you want us to sell our house for your stupid start up plan?}    

•  Chahaji! Who asked you to spend 13 L initially on coding when your child wanted to open a shop!! Mein nahi toh Beta hi sahi....Bass computer chalale!!!

4.    I have few family relatives who everytime I meet start asking me about my future plan. The basic intension is to know when i am settling as in getting married. Their basic question is:"Koto ar kaaj korbi edik oidik eka eka ghurbi. Ebar ekta chele dekhe biye kore ne. Onek to holo boyesh. Chele pawa mushkil hoye jabe ebar!" {How much do you want to work and earn and explore places all alone? It's time now to check a guy and get married. The more your age will be the more it will be hard to get a good guy!!

•         Aunty, I want a grand wedding, will you be lending me a Crore? 
•         Aunty, I want Fawad Khan, will you be able to get me one?
•          Aunty, I want to visit the world, will you be able to get me a guy who wants the same?
•         If not....then SHUT UPPP!!!

There will a thousand such examples and in the process of keeping their words and for the love of their parents and society and prior commitments each one of us end up pleasing someone else and not our self. Good that we are doing this but as i said when the light dims and the silence peeps in you should be proud of your choices and should end up saying I love myself and so I am doing this. The world would be happy to see how many of us actually raises our hand!

PS:

I am not doing a crime by loving myself more than anyone else. I believe if I am unable to love my self I will not be able to love anyone else or to accept anything which violates my rules of leading a happy life. Yes, I am choosy and super selective when it comes to taking a decision and why not. Unlike a lot I do not want to regret thinking it could have been like this if I would have done that! 

Yes I love my self enough to let all the bull shit go away from me so what if at times people end up not being with me because of the importance that I give to myself. Sorry I cannot please your EGO by serving you a plate of hot chocolate with a burning finger!!

FYI, Few Good Reads: 

1. Women.Food and God by Roth

2. The Four Agreements by Ruiz

3. A Return to Love by Williamson

4. Feeling Good When Life Is Hard by Hagen

5. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brown

This is what good people suggest and not  me. I dare you to know my book list. ;-P

Thanks

The Enlightened Soul!