The Apropos of Self Love

Musings with Old Friends : XVI

The experience of self love is often derided as the source of much of society's ills. It is the bane of the lovers who find that in a trusting relationship they engaged, they had loved themselves more than the other. Yet in encountering the melancholic happiness in many people, this appears to be the one taboo they observe on account of the rules of civility, that is a thorn in their search for true happiness.

This may also be the reason for the excesses that we encounter, as if it may dismiss our natural and human compliance with the laws of civility and replace it with our philandering will and short-term wishes. Drug taking, extreme sports and activities, macabre fashions, obsessions and problems of alcoholism are symptoms and witness to such a desire.

It has become the custom of society to permit such practices where the individual does not hurt anybody else but is merely exercising his individual rights. However, we get into family commitments at an early stage in life before we are aware of our own impulses in the matter and find ourselves in a conundrum of indecision in later life.

An individual so inclined to live a life of adoration for himself needs to organize his life very carefully. This is so that the experience of adoration has a basis and is not tempered by obligations unfulfilled to family, children, credit card debts, work issues and social relations. Certainly the quality that they admire in themselves needs to be true and durable. It would be a matter greater than simple vanity.

Such qualities that we discover in ourselves does plead for an adulation. It demands constant attention. We find ourselves performing at the optimum in such cases and it is such a boost to our health and mental peace. And it appears like the most natural thing, a fulfillment of responsibilities and living the relative ideal, without the need for defensiveness. A man of such qualities doesn't wait to find his approval on the CBS morning show.

I have to admit that this thought is something new and simply came on without warning. I had dismissed such possibilities as Utopian and certainly the libertine head of self love continues to have it in for me. However, a thinking man has certain obligations to himself. What would a new Marquis de Sade mixed with the adoration of the magi, be like in the new world today?

Reviews

[Timothy Burjess]

Your style of writing is very enthralling, the language drawing and it's effect makes one picture the entirety of a subject as a whole. This is a very interesting topic to cover and one that I have not come across before: always a beneficial aspect of writing. You divulge into the parts of human nature that individuals today ignore or simply dismay.
This is, one could comment, an intellectual approach to reasoning into root causes and external factors which promote that horrid definition: 'A Mid-Life-Crisis'.
I think you have uncovered a very interesting part of human psychology, for the everyday drone thinks not of these things, those with a sense of individualism cannot help but ponder some different questions.

Thank you for this wonderful piece!