Life will ensure that more or less everybody, sooner or later, will disappoint you. This is a gift from life. It is life’s way of helping you detach from the dependencies that you have created on the outside and find solace in your own sovereign self.
Being social beings, our need for the company of other human beings is valid, a very part of the innate design. But having to seek validation from others is not.
We were designed to be our own cheerleaders, our own champions. Until we fell from grace. Since then, we seek validation from the outside, love from the outside, acknowledgement from the outside.
Life however ensures that we do not succeed at this quest. How else would we be forced to reconsider the presence of that inner cheerleader? Once we fall back upon our only dependable friend – our own inner self, the social scene starts re-orienting. After all, you were rejected by others only so that you re-unite with yourself. If and when this happens, life is happy to turn around your social scene.
People are eager to flock to the one who doesn’t need them or their validation, almost as if they want to participate in a fun challenge to try and change his ways. People flock to the sovereign one, also because they crave to live that way themselves, free of all concern for validation from the outside. He gives them a glimpse of their own potential, their own future freedom, their own loftiness.
Self-love is not the anti-thesis of other-love. It is in fact the guarantee of people loving you yet more. And receiving such love allows the one rooted in self-love to offer back more love to the world. That is how loving and validating yourself goes hand in hand with loving and validating others.
