Does loving yourself as you are at any given moment mean you should never want to change yourself? I asked myself that question as I listened to Sonya Renee Taylor’s “The Body is not an Apology”. Her book on radical self-love resonates with me; however, it also offered me some strange thoughts. Like should I mimic the bug trapped in amber and never want to see change happen to me?
That cannot be right. And at it’s core, it’s not. It’s a strawman idea of self-love. If self-love meant never changing, what happens on your birthday? You age. You grow a year older (one hopes a year wiser) and you change. Therefore, self-love, if it means never changing, cannot possibly be right. I believe the opposite is true. Self-love is the work of loving the changing self, on a moment by moment basis. It means a critical examination of what makes you you and why that makes you who you are.
This also means you can love yourself in the midst of a transformation. Suppose for a moment, you have decided, for your own reasons which are not detrimental to yourself, to change. In that time, you are neither your old self or the new imagined self. You are the self putting in the work. Therefore, you must love that self as well. The self of the every day. The goal self may never come to pass. This is okay. So long as you are loving yourself in the midst of it, instead of punishing yourself for not reaching the goal self, then you’re doing just fine. I need to remind myself of this; therefore, I write to you, my friend. Love yourself, as is, every day. Love yourself through every change. Love yourself authentically and you will always have the love of someone, the most important someone, yourself.