{bon mot} monday | love the one you’re with

on 02-08-2016

I didn’t plan to share another “universal” quote this week. Last Monday’s post was sparked by my daughter’s twentieth birthday, and today’s was going to be a Rumi-inspired prelude to Valentine’s Day.

What shifted? Maybe it was stumbling upon this Psychology Today article that defines self-love as an action, not a state of feeling good. The “Seven-Step Prescription for Self-Love” includes hearty doses of intentional living, forgiving ourselves and acting on needs instead of wants.

Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth. Self-love is dynamic; it grows by actions that mature us. When we act in ways that expand self-love in us, we begin to accept much better our weaknesses as well as our strengths, have less need to explain away our short-comings, have compassion for ourselves as human beings struggling to find personal meaning, are more centered in our life purpose and values, and expect living fulfillment through our own efforts.

I also think the shift had something to do with this particular part of Super Bowl’s 50th Anniversary stroll down Memory Lane. Watching clip after clip of a radiant Whitney Houston belting out “The Star Spangled Banner” — face glistening, eyes bright . . . and that voice — made me revisit and listen to every last line of another anthem, one that extolled the power of self-love.

I let “The Greatest Love of All” carry me beyond thoughts of Houston’s tragic death to the heart of the song –“learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” I remembered the first few times I heard it as a teen in 1985, how selfish the lyrics sounded, and how with each passing year, I’ve experienced the infinite power of their universal truth.