We fall in love with people, and we fall in love with places and things. But how many of us have fallen in love with ourselves? It’s a weird concept to think about – falling in love with yourself – it seems like something that we shouldn’t need to experience. But I’m starting to think it might be something we all need to do especially as a prerequisite for all our other types of love especially as we get older.
In the first place, what does it mean to “fall in love?” I ask because the concept is confusing to me: Does love really just happen? Don’t get me wrong, the love between two people can seem to be a rather unexplainable occurrence. And I am indeed one of those weird people who think that love at first sight is possible. But beyond the feelings we feel that let us believe that love is serendipitous, perhaps it is also possible that the culmination of our experiences in life are the true determinants for what we believe, know, and experience love to be. In that breadth, maybe falling in love isn’t so unexplainable, maybe it is a choice that is the consequence of all our other choices, however unaware we are of those choices.
If falling in love is a choice, maybe we can also learn to choose it for ourselves. Something people often fail to ask themselves is whether they like who they are; whether they like that person staring at them in the mirror. It’s easy to be your harshest critic on one hand, many of us are; but on the other hand, it’s also easy to fall into the abyss of conceitedness, and many of us do that too. But if virtue lies between two extremes and I believe it does, falling in love with yourself occurs somewhere in the middle – where we appreciate who we are and the gifts that we have, while accepting our weaknesses and imperfections with a fervent desire to do better each day.
I think that when you don’t fall in love with yourself, there is an expectation that the person you fall in love with, will fill the void of self-worth that is really up to you and I to fill for ourselves. Even when people love us the way we deserve and desire, they can’t always give us what we need. And one of the things we need to give ourselves is our self-worth. I often get a lot of disagreement when I tell people, “You can’t save anyone.” But all I am trying to convey is that no matter how much someone loves you, they can’t give you the things that you have to obtain for yourself – and your self-worth is one of them; learning to be in love with who you are is one of them.
Falling in love with yourself is as beautiful as any experience of love is. It’s learning to laugh at your awkward tendencies and smile at all your quirky habits. It’s learning to be grateful for the many sides you have – confident, crazy, shy, sexy, nerdy, angry, weird, and all the rest of them. It is realizing that you’re one of a kind and that you deserve to give the world the best person you can be. Falling in love with yourself is being happy in your life and knowing that in this one moment in time, you’re beautiful simply because you are you. 
