I used to think loving yourself was the whole point. A finish line. A healed, self-possessed version of me standing somewhere clean and untouched by other people’s needs. But the older I get, the more that idea feels incomplete. Loving yourself matters because it keeps you alive. Loving others matters because it gives that life direction.
There’s a particular weight that comes with paying attention right now. You can feel it when you read about ICE raids, when you see families reduced to “cases,” when cruelty is justified with the language of order. You can feel it when Palestine becomes a talking point instead of a place where people wake up every day and try to survive one more. Loving yourself in these moments means staying awake to what’s happening. But if it ends there, it turns inward and hollow, care without responsibility. Sometimes loving others looks unglamorous. It looks like listening when you’d rather rest. It looks like staying angry without becoming cruel. It looks like continuing to care even after you’ve been disappointed by institutions, by leaders, by people who should have known better. There’s a temptation to shrink the world down to what you can manage – your body, your boundaries, your carefully curated peace. But the world doesn’t get smaller just because you stop looking at it. Someone else still pays the cost. Loving others means accepting that discomfort is part of being awake.
I’m learning that loving myself is not about retreating into a bubble where the world can’t touch me. It’s about building enough steadiness to stay engaged. Enough compassion to keep my heart open. Enough humility to know I don’t get to decide whose suffering is “too complicated” to address. Loving others doesn’t mean erasing yourself. It means understanding that the self is not the center of the story, it’s one voice. And love, real love, is not passive or sentimental. It is attentive. It is political. It is a choice you make every day to stand on the side of people, even when it costs you comfort.
That’s the kind of love I’m trying to practice now. Not quiet. Not perfect. Just honest, and unwilling to look away.
