What Do Toothache & Selfish Love Have In Common?
[This is Part I of a 3-part series.]
The book I remember
Many years ago, I got hold of a copy of a book about love of self. In it, the author cleverly used a metaphor of a toothache to illustrate why some people are finding it difficult to develop a healthy kind of self-love. And I want to revisit this interesting concept because I have recently experienced it firsthand.
In this post article I want to share my thoughts on three things related to this topic. First, a biblical passage on self-love. Second, my recent horrible experience with an inexperienced dentist, and how I was saved by a gentle and loving dentist. And third, the 7 barriers of having a healthy love of self.
The biblical passage
Luke 10:27
For those of you who are not Christians, before you click out this post, I am using the bible not as a promotion of the Christian faith. I am treating the bible here as an authoritative literature reference.
In the Gospel of Luke (chapter 10), a lawyer stood up among the crowd. And like most lawyers who believe so much in their cleverness, he tested Jesus: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Being a cleverer teacher that he was, Jesus threw back a question, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” Meaning, the passages in the Old Testament. And to the lawyer’s credit, he knew his bible lessons. He did not hesitate:
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”
Jesus then said to the lawyer, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”
The lawyer should have stopped there, but he was a lawyer after all. So, to impress the audience, he went further: “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus answered him by telling them the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A neighbor, according to the parable’s gist, is not the other person. A sense of neighbor is realized when the self does goodness to the other. Meaning, the concept of “a neighbor” starts with the self.
The importance of love of self
What does “love your neighbor as yourself” mean? It simply means you can only give what you have. You cannot really truly love others if you do not love yourself. Can you? Of course, you can pretend that you do. But as the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln goes:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
But let me add my two-cent worth: “You can fool all of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool your very self even just one single time.” And, yes, you can quote me on that one.
How can you say you love the other if you do not even love yourself? You can only pretend that you can fool your own self, but yourself knows you are fooling yourself. Confusing? Yes. So let me continue.
Where does love of self come from?
All major religions have one thing in common: the teaching on love. For Christians, the basic tenet of faith is that God loves each and everyone of us. And there is no greater proof of this than God’s own Son offering his own earthly life. As the Christian grows older it is their responsibility to discover why they are lovable in the eyes of their God. It is one thing to be told that God loves me, but it is another to really believe that I am worthy of love.
Going back to the Greatest Commandment
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”
We cannot expect a 5-year-old to be able to observe this. Or even a 15-year-old. And God himself can understand that. The Greatest Commandment is very serious and demanding. Its observance is expected only from those whose hearts have survived brokenness; from those who have discovered intimacy with their soul; those who have found their potential; and those whose minds have been opened to things that are beyond understanding.
Broken but made whole
My heart can only begin to love God after it has gone through a lot of wanderings. When I was younger, I kept chasing after things, people, and experiences that I thought would give me the ultimate happiness. Only to discover that more often than not, relying on them would only lead to heartaches. Because even after I have embraced and achieved all of them, there is still emptiness within me. This is what St. Augustine means in his book Confessions when he states:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
I cannot love God “with all my heart” while my heart continues to chase something else.
How to find a soulmate within me
I can only love God “with all my soul” after I have discovered and felt at home with my own self. Most people when they have met the love of their life, they say that they have found their soulmate. What they have failed to mention is that you have no idea what a soulmate is unless you have known what your own soul is looking for. And to do this, you need to get to know your own soul first.
No wonder the meeting of two soulmates would sometimes end in separation or divorce. They thought that the other soul was what their own soul was looking for. Know thy soul first, and you will know what it is looking for.
I have found my strength
With my broken but whole heart, and being a friend to my own soul, I have found my strength. Who can defeat me when my heart and my soul work as a formidable team?
God does not provide for everything. We need to do our part. He gave us a heart capable of chasing after things that matter most in life. And He gave us a soul capable of finding higher a meaning in life. When these two work together, there is strength. And this is the kind of strength that I can offer to God. Now I can say that I can love God “with all my strength”.
A mind that sees far, discovers God
A small mind is a very dangerous mind. It produces bigotry and extreme intolerance. Racism is its hallmark. And the irony is that it can be easily manipulated. The first information it receives becomes the truth immediately, and there’s no way for it to change, regardless of a proof to the contrary. It is no surprise it is so vulnerable to misinformation, disinformation, and ridiculous conspiracy theories.
A small mind that thinks and believes it has God on its side is very, very dangerous. Some people believe it is okay to kill another human being in the name of God.
But the mind can only be small if it chooses to. It chooses to be small when it refuses to be open to things that are hard and difficult to see. This is where we understand the wisdom of science and religion working together.
The human mind is meant to soar higher
Our mind is not meant to be small. It does not stop searching for the truth. And since the ultimate truth is not found in the here and now, the mind continues its never-ending pursuit. In its constant pursuit, the mind becomes wider and bigger. For the Christians, this is what Jesus meant when he says:
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12-14)
Jesus recognized the smallness of the disciples’ mind at that time. After all, they were not among the elite scholars in their society. They were a bunch of farmers, fishermen, and from other lowly pursuits in life. Many of them jockeyed for position and rank. Their ambitions were above their grade. But as long as they remained true to Jesus’ words that they never stopped learning, their wisdom would exceed that of the greatest scholars. And the Spirit was there to guide them.
The need to go back to the basics
Sadly, many Christians themselves have forgotten this. They think that faith is all about what they have learned in catechisms when they are in grade school. Sunday after Sunday they hear the same things, and that’s it. What is forgotten is that the Spirit that Jesus was talking about is speaking out there, even outside the confines of the Church. A Christian belongs to the church, as well as to the world. This is what big mind is all about. And this is the kind of mind that I give, “to love God with all my mind”.
[You may want to watch this YouTube video on Positive Changes.)
The Self is at the center
Everything starts with the self. When we are growing up, we learn early on that we are important. We believe that we are at the center of our small universe. And our parents reinforce this. They make us feel very special.
But the time comes when we realize that this love of self is the kind of selfish self-love. We begin to experience our heart getting broken. That we cannot have everything we want, or have it our own way. The universe is getting bigger, and we are not the center of it. And our parents are now trying their best to teach us that we are now entering the bigger world stage. Where the secret to living in peace with others is to learn the art of giving and taking.
Self-discovery starts when we begin to experience successes and failures in our relationships with others. Our love of self is slowly being tested and refined. We would learn that there must be a balance between how far I give and how much I take.
Going back to my own quote
“You can fool all of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool your very self even just one single time.” Unless we are suffering from some kind of a personality disorder, the first person to know when we are fooling ourselves is our own self.
Unhappiness happens when we find that the world is not kind to us. It happens when we feel that we have given more than we have taken, but people still are not reciprocating it. And yet we continue to go on, pretending and hoping that things will turn around. Worse, we begin to believe that it is all our fault. But deep inside something is telling us that it is both our own fault, and not our fault. The self – or soul if you may – is telling us something.
What is our soul telling us?
Maybe it is time to have a deeper “conversation” with our self. Perhaps it is time to re-examine our sense of self love. Unhappiness is the result of a misplaced love of self.
In Part II, I am going to share my toothache experience that reminded me of the importance of reassessing my love of self, and my love for others. And I will feature the dentist, and the staff, who are instrumental in my decision to write this three-part article.
In Part III, we go back to the causes of our toothaches in life. As I mentioned at the start of this article, an author of a book about having a healthy self-love used the metaphor of a toothache in illustrating why some people are finding it difficult to develop a healthy kind of self-love. We are all suffering from a toothache, in some form or another.
Stay tuned.
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