Self-love. The other day this word popped into my head, and I suddenly just froze. It struck something so deep within me, I didn't know what to do.
So, I sat quietly in my room, played some beautiful instrumental music, and toyed with this word like a kitten with a ball of yarn. I flipped it over and over in my head, analyzing it, pulling it apart bit by bit. I jotted down everything I thought of in my little black book (my journal).
After about fifteen minutes of this process, I read over my key concepts that I had written down, satisfied with what I had come up with.
Self-love. This compound abstract noun (to be more technical) is a very special one, for it has quite a number of meanings.
The first one I thought of was, "Why is it joined with a hyphen? Why is 'self' and 'love' connected to make one compound idea?" Well, this is where it gets interesting (at least I think so)...
The word 'self' in this context means looking at yourself, only seeing yourself. It means YOU, you get what I'm saying? Then you get the next word, which is 'love". Now, love in itself has many different complex meanings, but for now lets look at it in general, overall love - if you could combine all the different types of love into one. If you haven't noticed yet, we're breaking apart the compound abstract noun into its two original words. "Why have you done this?" you might be asking. This is why:
If we separate these two words, they become two different ideas, right? However, they are still connected in a way.There is a metaphorical meaning as to why I have separated this word, which is that you've got yourself, and then you get the "idea" of love towards yourself. The first word is 'self', which becomes the main concept, because you always think of putting yourself first, thinking about yourself more than others. The second word (love) then becomes the "idea" connected to the first one.
The meaning behind this is that, you always want to put yourself first, you want to take care of yourself first, you want to love yourself first, but society has taken that word 'love' and made it an idea, rather than...something you already have. Society has made it harder to connect that word to yourself. You may think now that it's wrong to love yourself, because if you do, it's considered arrogant or egotistical. You may also think that you need to love and take care of your friends and family first before yourself, and thus never getting time for yourself. You may even think that you can't love yourself, that you are unable to, that you can't find anything about yourself worth loving. This is where the heart and brain go head to head.
Think of the word 'self' as your brain, and the word 'love' as your heart. Now think about separating the word 'self-love' - 'brain-heart'. You now have 'self love and 'brain heart'. The first one makes grammatical sense, doesn't it? But the second one - 'brain heart' - doesn't. It's grammatically incorrect. So is the metaphorical, psychological meaning. If you have the brain and heart as two separate ideas, they clash, and thus malfunction because of this conflict. They are two different 'ideas' trying to operate as one, without any connection whatsoever.
This is not what we want. We want them to have a connection, or to work as one, as a whole.
Go ahead into part 2 and read the rest on what I have to say on "Self-love".
