No one can make you feel inferior without
your consent. –Eleanor
Roosevelt
The importance
of loving ourselves, making this our first priority in life, cannot be
overstated. A healthy sense of self worth, being in possession of one’s self,
is fundamental for acting in the world around us in ways that edify and
minimize the potential for doing harm.
Feelings of
inferiority are often a key signal that our self is in need of some care and
attention from us, beginning with an acknowledgement and acceptance of both our
potential for goodness and our
potential for being far less than good.
Without this we
cannot expect to function well in life because we are not living in alignment
with this basic truth of human nature—that everybody is both wonderous on the
one hand and tragically, inevitably flawed on the other.
So, the
challenge is one of increasing our awareness of these two contradictory energies
in ourselves, becoming more acquainted with their texture and flavour
(so-to-speak), which will then allow us to manage them with much more skill and
grace.
This, from my
point of view, is how we learn to do as little harm as possible, but it isn’t a
quick fix. Much education of both the mind and the heart is involved.
It’s about
cultivating compassion beginning with ourselves, which at some point becomes
natural to extend to others as well.
However, the
road to success in these matters isn’t a straight line—patience is required.
We need to be
gentle with ourselves as we make our way through varying degrees of successes
and failures, the ups and downs, embracing them both, working with them as well
as we know how at any given moment in time.
But as we mature, as we begin
to bear fruit and feel just a little more worth our own attention and care, we
will eventually sense that who we are is enough, not perfect according to the
dictates of conventional wisdom, but perfectly, inevitably human—a condition paradoxically
characterized by being perfectly imperfect.
This is the
basis on which no one will ever make you feel inferior again, for how could
they? We are all born of the same fundamental human impulses, no one of us
better or worse than any other, except according to misguided beliefs or
narratives that don’t serve anyone well.
It’s all about
accepting the humanness of our condition, forgiving ourselves and others for
the inevitable failures, being patient and always returning to home, to our
center—to love.
