“No one is going to love you until you learn to love yourself.”

At some point in your adult life I’m sure you’ve either heard this saying, or maybe even passed it along to someone else in your immediate social circle. And on the off-chance that you have not personally crossed paths with this little gem of information, you’ve undoubtedly heard it somewhere in the pop culture phenomenon of today’s world.

My only question now though, is why?

Why did this saying ever become a thing?

No seriously, I’m actually trying to figure this out.

Either I’m missing the message completely, or I’m just not enlightened enough to actually comprehend it. But this isn’t actually good advice. Nor is it even mildly motivational.

Personally, I think it’s more on the offensive side.

Am I the only one who hears this and thinks, “yep, great way to just kick them when they’re already on the ground? Let’s keep doing that!”

The whole premise behind it is also confusing for me. Telling someone who may already be struggling with a positive self-image or finding their own self-worth that they aren’t qualified to be loved, makes as much as sense as telling a paraplegic to just walk it off.

And who even came up with the idea that you have to have this perfectly packaged life to be worth loving? Why are these the ideas that seem to catch like wildfire in Oklahoma after a dry spring?

I can personally speak to the fact that I’ve been down that rabbit hole of being unable to love myself, and I’m absolutely certain that there is no way I would’ve ever made my way back out of Wonderland if it weren’t for the love that bled from other hearts to mine.

Love does not require careful organization that keeps the colors of our personal being from bleeding together.

It demands the exact opposite.

Love is being able to find joy and beauty in the mess of the person we’ve somehow pieced together from the rubble of our own personal wars.

Yes, I think that self-love is hands down one of the very best kinds of love to have. I hope and pray that if you’re reading this, you have just that.

But, if you’re reading this and aren’t currently in that space, and maybe you never have been, then that’s okay too. That doesn’t disqualify you from love. Don’t you dare ever believe that it does.

To give love is to know love. Maybe we should start encouraging people to start there.

Maybe this idea could become a thing.