“Self-love is the greatest form of love.” I strongly believe in that phrase. Self-love covers a wide range of factors in our life. This is not only about us falling in love with ourselves, but also not solely about the feeling of being in love. But something deeper than the feeling of love.
Self-love often is regarded with two different perspectives, the positive and the negative. Negatively speaking, people regard this as something selfish wherein you focus more on yourself than being connected and loving others. That is not wrong as when we focus too much on ourselves eventually it can consume us to the point that we do not care for others anymore and just ourselves. However, loving yourself can bring better things to yourself and to the people around you. Loving yourself means knowing yourself deeper than we normally do.
Sometimes, we think that we know ourselves, but what we know about ourselves was based on other people’s perspective about us as we have the tendency to always consider what other people says. One of the perks of knowing yourself better is giving you the thought of what makes you feel genuinely happy and satisfied in life. This is where service comes in my experience. Whenever I feel lost and feel like I’m at a dead-end of the direction and path I am taking, I try to pause, reflect on myself, and do something that grounds me. Service is always my key to be grounded wherever I go in life. Being grounded gives me that genuine happiness that I cannot get compared to the material things that I have. That urge to be of service to other people was the main reason why I joined Rotaract in the first place.
You see, self-love does not only revolve on the ideas that we just need to spend time to ourselves, sometimes, we just need to disconnect from the usual things we are doing that make us feel lost and connect to the things that will help us reconnect with ourselves. Hence the reason that self-love is the greatest form of love. Because not only you are able to know yourself better, but you get yourself connected to the people around you that matter. And by doing so, you can give that service to others which will help you love yourself even more.
