I Don’t “Love” Anything About Myself

A journalist approached me last week and asked, “What is it you love about yourself?”

I was taken a bit by surprise, as she pushed a microphone towards me for my response.

“I don’t love anything about myself…” I stammered. 

Immediately I felt as if I had answered wrong. “Does anyone else say they love something about themselves…?”

“Well, the last lady we talked to said she loved her smile.”

As usual, I regretted talking to the press. Some journalist would ask me a question – on the record – and I would make a statement. Then they would use a small part of my statement in the eventual news article, and I would come across very differently than I had meant to. I would feel misrepresented and regret the whole episode. For this reason many who talk to the media regret doing so, with reason. 

But the encounter left me wondering: Is there anything wrong with not “loving” anything about yourself?

The question gave me pause. I had to think this over. Do I need to apologize for not “loving” some aspect of myself? Am I missing something here? And what exactly does “love” mean in this context?

If I could go back and answer that question more fully, after having thought it over, I would say the following:

I don’t “love” anything about myself. But neither do I “hate” anything. Over the years I have come to understand what my virtues and vices are, and those aren’t going to change much. At almost 56-years of age, I know who I am. And I have never felt more comfortable in my skin than I do now. This is contentment, not love. It is acceptance, not hatred. It was many years of work (ie. suffering) to be able to get to this point.

That is how I see it.

So in this context I don’t love anything about myself. But I appreciate certain things, and that appreciation was earned through hard work and long struggle. To become “comfortable in your skin” is not something most 19-year olds experience, in my experience. But as you get older one hopes to feel that way. If you’re lucky.

I don’t look so much for “bliss” or “joy” in my life. I am not that interested in “happiness,” as conventionally understood. 

Instead I look for fulfillment, contentment, and equanimity. I look for a sense of “peace” in my daily life. Again, I hope to feel comfortable in my skin. I try to earn that stolid feeling through hard experience.

Happiness is a chimera, I think. “Happiness” depends too much on good luck, it seems to me, and has a way of swerving from joy to dejection. It is variable; it is untrustworthy. I don’t trust fickle “happiness.” But I do trust contentment. It is more solid. The ground is firm under my feet there.

But still. I feel as if not “loving” anything about myself is countercultural. Nevertheless, I suspect to “love” yourself borders dangerously close to narcissism. And to “hate” yourself verges near to self-loathing. Both seem ridiculous to me and should be avoided.

So I will take contentment. I will live in a Zen-like state of peace and acceptance, as much as I can. I will abjure the love-hate bipolar mood swings, leaving that to the manic depressives and temperamental teenagers, none of which I am. I’m a full-grown adult, nearing retirement. Supposedly, I have learned a thing or two in all my years. But even that sometimes is in doubt.

I am who I am.

It seems like it took some 50 years to figure that out. To know myself, at some level.

That is a victory of sorts.

Isn’t it?