Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
In our own eyes, we are fallen creatures. It is hard for people to respect themselves, knowing all the wrongs and shortcomings of yourself.
If we did respect ourselves, and others and the world, then we might have treated ourselves as someone we cared for. Then we might strove to set the world straight and orient towards Goodness. Instead of sentencing everybody to misery where our resentment and hatred would eventually lead.
It is easy to be cynical, and believe that people are arrogant, egotistical, and always looking out for themselves. It is in fact fashionable to hold that opinion. But such orientation towards the world is not common to many people. In fact, most people have an opposite problem: they shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame and self-consciousness. Thus, instead of inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves at all, and they don’t take care of themselves with attention and skills. It is as if people often don’t believe that they deserve the best care. They are painfully aware of their faults and inadequacies, real and exaggerated. They believe that other people shouldn’t suffer, and they will work diligently and altruistically to help them alleviate it. They extend the same courtesy to animals they are acquainted with - but not so easily to themselves.
The idea of virtuous self-sacrifice is deeply embedded in our cultures, and anything opposite sounds wrong.
But sacrificing ourselves to the highest good does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when someone demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return. That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated like slaves.
It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.
Famous phrases “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “loving your neighbour as yourself” hold some unexpected lessons:
It has nothing to do with being nice.
These are equations, not injunctions.
If you are someone's friend, family member, lover then I am morally obliged to bargain as hard on my own behalf as they are on theirs. If I fail to do so, I will end up a slave, and the other person a tyrant. What good is that? It is much better for any relationships when both partners are strong.
Furthermore, there is little difference between standing up and speaking for yourself, and doing it for someone else.
This means embracing and loving the sinner (imperfect you) who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else who is stumbling and imperfect.
Because you are so tied up with the world and others, your mistreatment of yourself can have catastrophic consequences for others. Therefore you are not simply your own possession for torture and mistreat. This is the most obvious in the aftermath of suicide, when those left behind are often bereft and traumatized.
Think about this, people have amazing ability to befriend each other, to love their intimate partners and parents and children and to do what they must do to keep the machinery of the world running.
There was an actual man, injured and disabled by a car accident, who was employed by local utility. For years after the crash he worked side by side with another man, who for his part suffered from a degenerative neurological disease. They cooperated while repairing the lines, each making up for the other’s inadequacy. This is an everyday heroism, and it is a rule, not the exception.
Credit yourself and people around you for acting productively and with care, as well as for genuine concern and thoughtfulness they manifest towards others.
People are so tortured by the limitations and constraints of Being, that it's amazing they ever act properly or look beyond themselves at all.
Some people degenerate into the hell of resentment and the hatred of Being, but most refuse to do so, despite their suffering and disappointments and losses and inadequacies and ugliness, and again this is a miracle for those with eyes to see it.
Hatred for self and mankind must be balanced with gratefulness for tradition and the state and astonishment at what normal, everyday people accomplish.
We deserve some respect. You deserve it. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are therefore morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want”. It is also not “what would make you happy”. This means helping yourself to thrive.
You need to consider your future and think: what might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and make me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?
You need to know where you are, so that you can chart your course. You need to know who you are, so that you understand your strengths and weaknesses. You need to know where you are going, so that you can be hopeful and structure order around you, so that you can bargain with yourself and don’t end up resentful and cruel.
You have to articulate your own principles so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play.
You must discipline yourself carefully. You must keep your promises to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.
You need to determine how to act so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be good to make the world a better place, but we would have to strengthen ourselves first.
You could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward goodness and a bit more away from hell. Once having understood Hell, particularly your individual one, you could deceive against going there or creating that. You could devote your life to go toward goodness. This would give you a Meaning. That would justify your miserable existence. That would atone your sinful nature and replace your shame and self-consciousness with natural pride and forthright confidence.
You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.
From the book: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson.
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