Love You

Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. -- Lucille Ball

One thing I keep learning, over and over again, is to put myself first. Does that sound selfish and uncaring? It might, because we have been taught that in order to be really good, really loving, we must sacrifice ourselves. We have picked up the message that giving to someone else means giving something up, or being depleted in some way.

At your core, if you touch into it, you know this is false. You know that making sure your needs are met (maybe not every desire, but each real need) is the cornerstone to a high-functioning life, where you are empowered and free to love and care for others. You know that you cannot pour from an empty cup and that putting on your own oxygen mask first is a wise instruction.

Lucy knew, she was absolutely spot on about how to get stuff done. Her life story is a giant testimony to this. As a beautiful woman in male-dominated Hollywood, Lucy shattered many a glass ceiling, and lifted so many people along the way. She discovered the fact that starting with herself was the key to success. She understood the truth that charity begins at home. Her personal power was directly proportional to the depth of her willingness to lovingly look after herself, facing whatever she might see reflected in the mirror (inner as well as outer).

Can I love myself? Can you? Are we willing to see ourselves clearly, and stop pushing our true nature to one side?

This poem reminds me that we are made of star stuff and that stuff is love.
May we feast on this.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

(Here's a recording, if you're the sort of person who gets more out of listening to poetry than reading it.)