What Matters Most

Life’s tough.
Sorry to open with such a cliché line, but I’m a little bit frustrated currently. People ask me sometimes, what matters most to you? Or more specifically, Who matters most to you.

I find that whenever someone asks this question, you have to answer in a way that is politically correct. You gotta say your family, your friends, or your children or whatever. But in my case, if I were being completely honest, the answer would be

ME. Myself. I. Moi. Mi.

The most important person in the world to me, is me.

Now hang on. Yes you may view that as extremely self-centred. But frankly, I don’t think it is. And I’ll tell you why.

I have this philosophy. A lot of the major things in life are concerned with your relationships with other people. A huge part of every day for everyone is spent interacting with others. Things you value in life are people among other things. Then why is it that when it comes to themselves, people always fall short of appreciation?

You’re a person. You’re just as unique, beautiful, and important as any other life on the planet. Then why is it that people struggle with self-esteem?

My philosophy is this. You have to love yourself (Not in a Justin Beiber sense). If you cannot love yourself, how on Earth can you be expected/trusted to love anyone else?

Think about it. The person you know the most about, is you. Which means you know about your faults and your strengths more than anyone else. You can change them if you wanted. But in others, you could never know them as well as you know yourself. You don’t know for sure all their faults and strengths. And yet there are people you like a lot. In spite of faults. If you can accept the faults that you can clearly see in others and still like them, why can’t you do the same for yourself?

Conversely, if you cannot accept the faults in you and like yourself, how can you be trusted to overlook the faults in someone else? How can you like them or trust them? 

Everyone knows everyone has their faults. The people that matter are those that care about you, in spite of those things.

They say that if you can’t find a single fault in yourself, there’s something wrong with you. I’d say the same is true for the opposite. If you say there’s not one thing good about you, you’re either lying or you don’t care to look hard enough. 

You’ve got to realise that the only way you can form complete relationships with someone else, is by first appreciating yourself and deeming yourself worthy of that relationship. 

It doesn’t have to be major things. At the end of the day if you can say to yourself, hey atleast I have a nice smile, that’s enough. 

And heck yeah it’s hard. It’s hard to reach the point where you look at yourself and think, I’m not too bad. But you’ve got to try. 

You need an effective filtering system. One that focuses on the positives only. People that care about you regardless of what you do, are a good start. 

And you can’t say no one cares about you. You’re just not looking hard enough. 

Because even super villains have sidekicks that adore them….But this isn’t about Batman.

Everyone has someone they haven’t noticed who thinks they’re fantastic. Well if they do, then clearly there’s something about you that’s good. 

And it’s extra difficult if you feel that lately everyone seems to resent you. But even in that case, you’re still capable of helping others. 

In psychiatry, there are classes of defense mechanisms people have in times of adversity. The class that is considered most mature and healthy is to feel good about yourself by helping others. 

That probably also sounds rather shallow and self-centred (Ironic isn’t it?). But it’s definitely a good thing. By putting yourself in a position where you are useful to others, where they appreciate you for your actions, you should be able to realise that one good thing about you is that you have the capacity to help others. And if you feel great doing so, then hey! Win win. 

I’ve struggled with this quite a bit. I’ve had a long period of time where my reflection bothered me and I felt that that person bothered other people too. For me, this blog, the fact that atleast one person somewhere felt the need to respond positively to it, by liking or following, meant that I atleast had some good things to say. And that little mental note helped me feel much better about myself.

You’ve got to find it in yourself. If you want to be happy, you’ve got to be the most important thing to you. And that isn’t a self-centred thing. That’s caring about the only person you can truly influence in this world. 

If you’re all you have, you gotta make sure it’s good. 

I can’t say what made me write all this. But I guess I’m tired of people, who I know to be great, not seeing what I see.