Discovering Ourselves through Others

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Discovering Ourselves through Others 

Popular wisdom says that without sufficient self-love, one cannot love others. This is backed by research which suggests that we see ourselves in the other. What it means to say is that our feelings about ourselves affect our feelings about others. Some people may even conclude saying that we love others to the extent that we love ourselves. So, how do we actually make the transition from loving ourselves to loving others?
The psychologist, Daniel Goleman, in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ hints as to how our emotional health affects the way we relate to others. When we develop our emotional intelligence, we open ourselves to a wide variety of emotions. It is only when we understand these emotions that we can empathise with the people around us. That is the first stage of love – love of others. It helps us become altruistic. Our growth in altruism, according to psychologists, begins when we are infants. This growth is quite natural to all of us. It is only later in our life, when we grow to maturity that we have to grow in altruism by ourselves.
Before we grow in love for others, it is said that we have to grow in our love for ourselves. This is quite essential if we wish to be altruistic. People who do not love themselves enough become pessimistic in relationships. They hesitate to believe that a person could love them. They anxiously await rejection from others and become demur in loving others. However, the other extreme of loving oneself leads to narcissim. A narcissist would not care for the other. He would seek people who will only boost his morale and self-esteem. Since he is concerned only about himself, he would not even think of empathizing with another unless he gains something out of it. So for a narcissist, altruism would be a self-seeking altruism which is a contradiction in terms.
So how do we know when we have the right amount of self-love in order to love others? We can grow to be altruistic only if we are able to accept ourselves for who we are. Once we appreciate the good and the bad in us, we will be able to appreciate the good and the bad in the other. Thus we are able to see ‘the God in the other and thus realise the God in us.’ For us to be altruistic we should recognise God’s unique love for us and for others individually. And so, we come to realise ourselves through the love we have for others.
Our love for others is drawn out from the love we have for us. This love we have for us, the self-love, comes only when we can accept ourselves for who we are and accept the love that God has for us. So how do we benefit from the love we have for others? The answer to this can be found in the words of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas: “If to love is to love the love the Beloved bears me, to love is also to love oneself in love and thus to return to oneself.” Let us begin our journey of self-discovery through our love for others.

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