Ode To Self 5

I am special. I am special. Look at me. Look at me. I am very special, yes so very special; You will see. You will see. I remember hearing that obnoxious little verse, sung to the tune for Frere Jacques, by a little girl on a documentary about narcissism. Obviously her parents and educators were wanting the little princess to grow up with good self-esteem. Ah, the psychobabble. Don't leave your home without it! I have never liked that word. Self-esteem. Someone once told me that it should not be confused with self adoration. Well, there is no difference. Esteeming yourself is no different from saying that you adore yourself. I had this conversation over and over with my psychotherapist, who was very stranded in the Adlerian nonsense about self-adulation and self-esteem. I eventually told him everything I believe about self-esteem. It is a bunch of nonsense of narcissism that simply inflates people with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. When he told me that I must feel good about myself I fired back that that is not part of my vocabulary. I feel good, or I don't feel good, or I feel bland and indifferent. But it has nothing to do with feeling good about myself. Myself is me and I do not treat myself as a person apart from myself. I am myself and I refuse to be split. This doesn't mean that I don't daily examine myself, my conduct, my behaviour and my attitudes towards others. But if I feel good about myself, it's more likely going to be that I approve of something I said, or how I handled a situation, or how I'm taking care of myself. But that isn't the same as feeling good or anything else about myself. I am not split. And I try to avoid psychic masturbation with just as much zeal as I refuse (usually) to indulge in self-loathing. Self-esteem and healthy self-love are two different gigs, Gentle Reader. When we love ourselves we love others as well. It isn't a question of order or preference because love is without preference. It is the essential healing and positive force of the universe. It is the very nature of God. I love you, I love me. I love me, I love you. And it's all good. Self-acceptance is fine. So is self-respect. Important features they are in coexisting in community. When we live in a collective of people who esteem, or adore, themselves, we have a perfect earthly imitation of hell. Individualized bloated egos too preoccupied with their own fictional significance to care crap about anyone else. This is already the reality we are currently stuck with. All you have to do is spend five minutes on any major intersection downtown in my city, Vancouver. You will find out how much people care about each other. Not very much. And you will also see how much they care about themselves. You will see beggars and homeless people lining the sidewalks with their squalor and heartache and no one seems to notice or care. They have lots of self-esteem and zero amount of care for the less fortunate. I am thinking here of St. Paul the Apostle's admonition to the Philippians, that each one love and esteem the other as being more important than themselves. Absolute heresy to the psychiatric industry, and also the only way we are going to climb out of this mess of collective trauma we have helped esteem ourselves and, by default, one another into. Little children: Love one another.