When I was a child I learned that the most noble act a person could perform was to sacrifice in order to serve others. While I do fundamentally believe this is true, I also know that I erroneously interpreted that to mean that other people come first and I come last. I believed that other people’s needs should come before my own, because that is what sacrifice is, right? It’s sacrificing my needs in order to meet the needs of others. Taking that further I also erroneously believed that because other people’s needs mattered more than my own it meant that, in general, other people mattered more than me - period.
This is problematic on many levels, but one of the
unforeseen consequences of always looking out for what other people needed, was
that even more than placing their needs before my own, I also placed their
thoughts, feelings, and beliefs before my own. The simplest way I can say it is
that I cared more about what other people thought than what I thought.
Virtually every single choice I made in life – from where to go to school, what
work to do, whether or not to come out of the closet, even down to what socks
to buy – every choice was accompanied by, “but what will other people think
about this…?”
I basically couldn’t do anything in life without being
paralyzed by the fear of not getting other’s approval and desperately wanting
their approval, because doing so meant I was making the “noble sacrifice” of
putting them first. But if I was so good at sacrificing myself and putting
other people first, why then has my life been plagued by feeling stuck,
depressed, lonely, etc.? I mean, shouldn’t I be the happiest, most contented
person in the world from all the “noble sacrifices” I’d been making? Why wasn’t
I being blessed for following the second great commandment, which is to “love thy
neighbor as thyself?” (Matt 22:39) (I’ll have more to say about this in a
moment…) From this passage, it seems pretty clear to me that the order of
operations is to love God first, then, love your neighbor. Okay, well – check!
Done! That’s what I’ve been doing. So why have I also been so miserable for so
long, and more poignantly, why have I felt so powerless in my own life?
I just want to add, that I don’t regret the things I’ve done
for others, not one little bit. It does feel good helping others, and it has
felt good my entire life to help others, the problem was that all that good
feeling never seemed to extend to me. I boxed myself into a trap where
taking care of myself and my needs meant putting myself first and if I put
myself first, then it meant putting other people last, which then meant I
was no longer nobly sacrificing for others – and I would be committing the
unpardonable sin of being selfish. I mean, that’s what it boiled down to for
me, or at least, that’s how I saw things.
I was taught that selfishness and pride are some of the
ultimate evils and – looking back – I can see how this would reinforce the idea
that I needed to put other’s first as a sign that I wasn’t selfish, that I
wasn’t prideful, to ensure that I wasn’t guilty of these terrible sins.
I had lots of reasons for putting my needs last, for putting
other’s first, for relying on the approval of others, and conversely, avoiding
the disapproval of others. At the heart of this I’ve just wanted to do the
right thing. I’ve just wanted to make my Father in Heaven happy and make other people
around me happy – and these are all good things. The problem isn’t sacrifice
and the problem isn’t caring for others. The problem is not truly seeing where
I fit in, in these acts, i.e., the misinterpretation of how to have love for
others in relation to myself.
As I see it, there at least three ways to interpret the
commandment in the book of Matthew to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” One way
to interpret this, as I’ve tried to outline here and what I believe I’ve done wrong
my whole life, is to “love thy neighbor BEFORE thyself.” This comes pretty
simply from an order of operations standpoint – “others” are mentioned first,
therefore, others should come first in my life.
But another way to interpret this scripture is to NOT ignore
the final condition “as thyself.” I infer from this that a certain measure of
self-love is ALREADY EXPECTED TO BE PRESENT in this commandment. If I could
re-word this in my own way I might rephrase this commandment to say, “love thy
neighbor as much as you love yourself.” Maybe the Lord doesn’t need to
explicitly command us to love ourselves because that should already be inherent
within us.
But for me, it seems, it wasn’t. Or perhaps my life
experiences, such as trauma, unhealthy relationships, and even simply the
immature understanding that accompanies youth, altered how I related to myself
and others in a faulty way.
Briefly, I’ll just mention another possible interpretation,
even though unlikely, it can still be beautiful in its implication – which is to “love
thy neighbor as [you are].” In other words, love your neighbor from who you
are, the way you are, i.e., “as thyself.” Think about that for a second. To
“love thy neighbor as thyself” = love thy neighbor from your own unique,
beautifully human, flawed, perfectly imperfect self. You don’t need to change
who you are to love someone else. Love them in whatever capacity YOU are able
to love them, and know that it’s enough.
That’s meaningful for me because, you see, I thought I did
need to change. I thought I needed to change who I was in order to get the
approval of others around me. Whether that “approval” was friendship,
praise/validation, relationship, acceptance, love, etc. I saw myself as
fundamentally flawed, literally worth less than others, and the only way I
could have worth (or love or success or whatever), was to change from the
worthless sack of s--t that I saw myself as, and be perfect – have the perfect
face, body, job, bank account, clothes, car, etc. Oh yeah, and doing all of
this while “sacrificing” myself to put other’s first.
Does this sound crazy to you? Because seeing it here in
black and white, it sure sounds crazy to me too!
I want to reiterate that I do believe sacrifice is noble, but
I was never asked to sacrifice loving myself in order to care for someone else.
In fact, and I think many of you readers already know this, you probably CAN’T
really love another until you do love yourself – because only when you truly
love and care for yourself, are you able to offer your best self to others,
when needed. The airplane oxygen mask analogy immediately comes to mind!
In spite of the all these realizations that I’m having, it
still feels selfish to love myself or to put some of my needs “first.” But I
remind myself that if I’m not loving myself (i.e., taking care of my needs),
then I’m not keeping the commandment to love my neighbor as myself, because I’m
not actually loving myself. It also occurs to me, that as much as I do want to
help others, the only person that I can truly have any control over taking care
of, is myself. Not only that, taking care of myself is my responsibility only.
It is not anyone else’s responsibility to make sure I exercise, eat right,
sleep well, etc. I am really the only person I CAN truly take care of.
Maybe what I need to “sacrifice” is not my love for others,
but my need for other’s approval. Maybe I need to “sacrifice” placing myself
last or thinking of myself as unimportant and learn that the key to loving
others is to start with loving me.
Photo by Bart LaRue on Unsplash
