4. Love

The Number 4 on my list "what is happiness" is love.

I took care of them and they showed me the simplicity of love

First of all, what means love for you?

For me it's a warm feeling that I feel when I care about someone. There are different types of love. Erich Fromm describes them best in his book "Die Kunst des Liebens" (The Art of Love). He also writes that for being able to love someone, we have to love ourselves. So I want to talk about self-love first.

I learned that, if I don't truly love myself, I will always feel some lack of love and keep searching for it outside of myself. That only creates tragedy. I would depend on other's acknowledgment and feel week in their hands. It's like giving your own voice to someone else and giving them the full authority to speak the judgement: Am I love-worthy or not?
If we don't learn how to find the positive answer deep in ourselves we become manipulable. People can tell us all kinds of things that make us more love-worthy. To a woman, who doesn't love herself, people can say:
You need to be prettier, skinnier, whiter, harder to get, nicer, easy going, submissive, hot, "girlfriend-material" and so on. They can tell her to be a good wife, to give her best, to avoid conflict, to smile and laugh a lot, to have wavy long hair, to have no pubic hair, to be a good mother, to be a virgin, to always want sex... and many other things. But in fact, all these things don't make that woman more love-worthy. They can't. Cause she is, like every other human, from birth already love-worthy. She just needs to find that herself.
People who don't love themselves usually fall into that trap. They let others abuse their weakness and let others dictate how they should be in order to get loved. People who don't truly love themselves will end up being so busy trying to fit into this ideal picture of themselves that they will hardly have time and strength to focus on what they actually want in life. They will also have a hard time truly loving another person, because they will feel so fragile and always wonder if they are loved back enough.
Women who don't love themselves will listen to advertisement that tells them "This product will make you a love-worthy woman. This bra will make you the person, that others will love. This lipstick will make you a woman to fall in love with. These jeans will make you a loved woman. This hair-relaxer will make you loved by everyone. These shoes will make you a love-worthy woman. ..." and they will keep shopping and buying to fill the lack of self love, their wardrobes so full and half of their salaries evaporated in expensive toxic perfume and technologies to remove their natural body hair. They will keep searching for inspirational pictures of photoshopped flawless skinny girls, keeping alive the industry for insecure women.

a poster on my best friends door

A woman who loves herself on the other hand is strong. Nobody can tell her what she needs to do in order to be loved. She already knows she is loved and she is sure she will be loved, because why wouldn't she be loved? She is perfect in her own way and she loves that way. She wakes up and loves herself. She has a relaxing shower and loves herself. She slips into her favorite comfortable clothes and she loves herself. She treats herself with her favorite tasty breakfast and she loves herself. She fills her day with the things she actually wants to do and she loves herself. She only meets the people she wants to see because they are lovely in their own way and they also love her the way she is, purely for being herself. She nourishes herself with only the best food she can get and she loves herself. She puts herself to sleep and she loves herself. No regrets.
Now this woman is strong and in harmony with herself. She has enough time and strength to actually change the world around her to a better world. She has enough time to think about big important things like what is going on globally and how she can contribute to being a human who doesn't harm others. She is aware of the world around her and she has the power to influence her environment in a good way. If a guy (or another woman) would dare to tell her to shave her legs in order to be more love-worthy she would break out in laughter and shake her head and tell the guy that he should shave his own legs if he cares about that and leave her legs being hers. She would only shave her legs if she feels pleasure in touching them or looking at them hairless, but she would not feel unloved if she didn't shave them. She is unstoppable because she loves herself.

Self-love is energizing and empowering, it is fun and liberating, it makes you see things more clearly. It makes you treat yourself much better. It makes you happy.

a rainbow-smile from the sky in berlin

Now women suffer a lot these days from the lack of self-love and it is only on behalf of the big big beauty industry to keep them from loving themselves too much. Women are the big target customer group, because they are buying the most. Much more than men. And guess who is sitting in the top positions of this industry. Right: White men. They are like beauty dictators trying to keep the women insecure and addicted to shopping. On the other side women are earning far less in their jobs. So think about that inequality next time you are about to buy things. Is all of this really necessary? Should I keep running in that hamster's wheel? And go to work and go shopping and go to work and go shopping? And you are not the only one who is harmed here. Think about where all these clothes and things are produced. By humans who don't even earn one bug per day making thousands and thousands of t-shirts each day. Think about it.

When it comes to men, self-love is a little bit different. With testosterone comes a dose of self-confidence so it becomes harder to tell guys to shave their legs in order to be loved. But of course also in the men's world there are stereotypes dictating masculinity. Things like status, job, full hair, a car, a certain music playlist and the lack of weakness and emotions are required so being a good man. These stereotypes are harmful too and create some problems with the identity of men. Nevertheless I think that a man's self-love is not targeted so much and usually is quite stable. Men usually live their lives feeling like it's o.k. to be how they are, and they presume that someone else will love them. There is a reason why the poster of the beach body above is made for women. Men usually just go to the beach and care less about if everything on them looks flawless. Of course there are always exceptions.

So if we manage to love ourselves, the rest becomes easy. The love we feel for every other creature is pure empathy. We can imagine ourselves being that creature and how it must feel and here we are already beginning to love that creature. This kind of love is universal and comes naturally. We treat ourselves the best so we wish the same for everyone else around us. If I nourish myself with good food, I will also naturally want to give the same pleasure to my friends and the people I love. I deserve the best, so does everybody else. An easy analogy.

And as soon as we understand and live this kind of basic love, it will also be a good foundation for any kind of romantic love. If I deserve honesty, so does the person I love. If I need someone to be patient with me, so does my partner need me to be patient sometimes. If I need a monogamous relationship with only one person, I will also only be with a person who needs the same. If I need many partners, I will only be with a person who understands that because she needs the same. If I truly love myself I am not depending on the love of my partner. I am myself and my partner can love me or not, it is nothing I can change. I love myself so I will let the other person love me too. And if anyone tries to abuse me or tells me to change or treats me bad, I understand that it is not my fault and I can go away.
And here we go, suddenly the woman who loves herself will only stay in healthy relationships that are good for her. And also she will not see herself as a deficit if she is not in a relationship. She is already love-worthy by her own nature. No need for a relationship status. And so it is easy to be free and go, if the partner is not good for her. And it is easy and natural for her to stay if the partner loves her as much as she loves herself, because she understands his love. A woman who loves herself will not feel ashamed of falling in love with a woman or a man or any kind of other gender. She will allow herself to explore what she wants and needs in order to be happy.

i love being loved by and loving this person