WotY - Love
Jan. 9th, 2011 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelSo I posted about what I was considering for the word-of-the-year concept, but I never got around to saying what I decided on.
This is relevant because I am already having doubts.
After a lot of dithering, I settled on 'love' as my word. It covers a lot of possibilities -- self-love being one of the highest priorities, but also love for other people, love for the things I make, doing things I love, discovering what it is that I love, etc.
I kind of have secondary words (leap, for one; and want, for another, especially replacing shoulds with wants, so "I should do X" becomes "I want to do X", positive desire instead of negative guilt) but love is the touchstone word.
Love be our song, and love our prayer, and love our endless story...†
Love for self is something I struggle with a lot. I have a total double standard -- things that I would forgive others for in a heartbeat, I beat myself up over; I expect perfection in thought and mind and mood as well as deed, and see all the flaws and hate them even though I would overlook greater problems in another -- and knowing that it is a double standard doesn't help me fix it. There is the logic part of my brain but then there is the emotion part of my brain
(sometimes I wish I were Vulcan‡)
and the two don't always agree. I can know that I shouldn't beat myself up for what boils down to being human, but that doesn't stop me from hating the flaws, hating the weakness, hating myself, like this little black hole inside me that just keeps tearing me down again and again.
Filling that with love is hard work, because it's like filling a bucket with a hole in it; I can patch up the void with love and it will drain out and I keep having to do it. And maybe if I keep at it long enough, the hole will heal over and I'll be able to fill myself with love and keep it there, and reflect it back to the outside world.
(the hardest part of "Love your neighbor as yourself" for me has never been loving my neighbor. sometimes I think I should treat it the other way around.)
And as with any new year's resolution, the first week or so was ... easy. There is a sort of endorphin high that comes with Making A Resolution, and it's fine riding that out, but that never lasts. Which is why a be-resolution is stronger than a do-resolution, because doing takes energy and momentum, and being ... well, that also takes energy, but less so, and it's a subtler sort of energy.
It's easy to keep up a flow of love (not even from myself, just opening myself up to accept love from the universe, instead of closing off with I-don't-deserve-love) when I'm feeling okay. But when I am in a slump, as I am now, of feeling worthless...
I haven't learned yet how to love myself when I'm not seeing anything worth loving.
I'm working on it.
...I kind of want to write to the person whose blog I got the idea from and ask what to do. But then I think -- it's only a week into January. The universe takes TIME to respond to intent. (And there is a part of me, the stern unforgiving judge part, that whispers that maybe the universe is waiting to see it I really can follow through or if I'm going to fail at this like everything else; that only once I prove myself worthy, which isn't going to happen according to the judge's exacting standards, will something come of this.)
And ... I don't know. /flail/
(love. love and warmth and acceptance and virtual snuggling of stuffed animals [because I can't do physical any more] and thoughts of kitties. love and tea and virtual blanketforts to create a safe haven. love and forgiveness and the warmth of winter-strength sunlight on bare skin.)
† "Rejoice, rejoice, take heart in the night, though dark the winter and cheerless, the rising sun shall crown you with light, be strong and loving and fearless. Love be our song and love our prayer and love our endless story: May God fill ev’ry day we share and bring us at last into glory."
‡ I spent a large part of (post-diagnosis) junior high and high school maintaining I was half Vulcan, and obsessing over Vulcans (and Spock and Saavik in particular). Then, it was no different than a six-year-old-me wanting to grow up to be a forest elf. Now, I wonder how much of this was an attempt to not have to deal with emotions about all the medical shit going on.
This is relevant because I am already having doubts.
After a lot of dithering, I settled on 'love' as my word. It covers a lot of possibilities -- self-love being one of the highest priorities, but also love for other people, love for the things I make, doing things I love, discovering what it is that I love, etc.
I kind of have secondary words (leap, for one; and want, for another, especially replacing shoulds with wants, so "I should do X" becomes "I want to do X", positive desire instead of negative guilt) but love is the touchstone word.
Love be our song, and love our prayer, and love our endless story...†
Love for self is something I struggle with a lot. I have a total double standard -- things that I would forgive others for in a heartbeat, I beat myself up over; I expect perfection in thought and mind and mood as well as deed, and see all the flaws and hate them even though I would overlook greater problems in another -- and knowing that it is a double standard doesn't help me fix it. There is the logic part of my brain but then there is the emotion part of my brain
(sometimes I wish I were Vulcan‡)
and the two don't always agree. I can know that I shouldn't beat myself up for what boils down to being human, but that doesn't stop me from hating the flaws, hating the weakness, hating myself, like this little black hole inside me that just keeps tearing me down again and again.
Filling that with love is hard work, because it's like filling a bucket with a hole in it; I can patch up the void with love and it will drain out and I keep having to do it. And maybe if I keep at it long enough, the hole will heal over and I'll be able to fill myself with love and keep it there, and reflect it back to the outside world.
(the hardest part of "Love your neighbor as yourself" for me has never been loving my neighbor. sometimes I think I should treat it the other way around.)
And as with any new year's resolution, the first week or so was ... easy. There is a sort of endorphin high that comes with Making A Resolution, and it's fine riding that out, but that never lasts. Which is why a be-resolution is stronger than a do-resolution, because doing takes energy and momentum, and being ... well, that also takes energy, but less so, and it's a subtler sort of energy.
It's easy to keep up a flow of love (not even from myself, just opening myself up to accept love from the universe, instead of closing off with I-don't-deserve-love) when I'm feeling okay. But when I am in a slump, as I am now, of feeling worthless...
I haven't learned yet how to love myself when I'm not seeing anything worth loving.
I'm working on it.
...I kind of want to write to the person whose blog I got the idea from and ask what to do. But then I think -- it's only a week into January. The universe takes TIME to respond to intent. (And there is a part of me, the stern unforgiving judge part, that whispers that maybe the universe is waiting to see it I really can follow through or if I'm going to fail at this like everything else; that only once I prove myself worthy, which isn't going to happen according to the judge's exacting standards, will something come of this.)
And ... I don't know. /flail/
(love. love and warmth and acceptance and virtual snuggling of stuffed animals [because I can't do physical any more] and thoughts of kitties. love and tea and virtual blanketforts to create a safe haven. love and forgiveness and the warmth of winter-strength sunlight on bare skin.)
† "Rejoice, rejoice, take heart in the night, though dark the winter and cheerless, the rising sun shall crown you with light, be strong and loving and fearless. Love be our song and love our prayer and love our endless story: May God fill ev’ry day we share and bring us at last into glory."
‡ I spent a large part of (post-diagnosis) junior high and high school maintaining I was half Vulcan, and obsessing over Vulcans (and Spock and Saavik in particular). Then, it was no different than a six-year-old-me wanting to grow up to be a forest elf. Now, I wonder how much of this was an attempt to not have to deal with emotions about all the medical shit going on.