The last few years have been a time when I’ve heard this advice so much that it started to irritate me. Not because I don’t think it’s good to take care of ourselves, but because some have taken the advice to the extreme so that they have stopped seeing what’s around them from too much self-centeredness.
What does it mean to take care of yourself, to love yourself, to appreciate yourself? I would choose three perspectives: mind, body, soul. It is important to pay close attention to:
What we learn, what types of experiences we expose ourselves to: what books we read, what podcasts or music we listen to, what movies we watch, what paintings we analyze.
What do we do with our body, what do we eat, how do we take care of our weight, health, fitness, tone.
How we make friends with ourselves and others, how we show appreciation, love and how we receive love; how we deal with all the emotions that come to us, how we integrate them, how we react to them, what stories we tell ourselves.
All this aims to help us build ourselves, to be a good version of ourselves, to accept who we are, to know our strengths and vulnerabilities, to treat ourselves with the care we would treat a cactus. The cactus is a flower with thorns, it takes a long time to bloom, but if we take care of it, the flower that rewards our care is of a rare beauty. At the same time, there are many who have become self-centered.
Think about it: have you ever talked to someone who only talked about him / her but didn’t have a minute to ask how you were doing? Or, if they ask, it’s just to hear ‘well’ and then to keep talking about them. Everything these people do is for them. It doesn’t matter what the other wants, nor thinks. Everything is for their good. The purpose of the above advice, however, is not only for us to be well and that’s it. We do not live in isolation, we are not alone in the world.
As John Donne said, ‘no man is an island’ – we are interdependent. Indifference, closed ears to what is coming around, ‘being left on seen’, ignoring, avoiding, aggression, behaving as if ‘we don’t need anyone’ will turn against us. Not immediately, not aggressively, not demonstratively, but through the emptiness that will exist around us. We only see it when we need others and they are no longer there.