We’re hearing the phrase “We’re all in this together” more and more during this current coronavirus pandemic. Well, fuck that. We may all be in this pandemic together but that won’t make some people more kind, empathetic or generous just because we are! The truth is, we are first and foremost still responsible for ourselves.

“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” ~ Charles Bukowski

We have to respond to and take care of our needs first.

Do we need to rest more, eat healthier more, move our bodies more?

Do we need more time for quieting down, doing nothing, observing, playing, laughing, creating & finding solutions to our current challenges?

Do we need to give ourselves the grace of loving-kindness when we make mistakes or feel we’re still not doing enough?

“The truth is the only one who has your back, is you. So don’t feel bad for taking care of it.” ~ Stacie Martin

No one else can do what we need to do for ourselves first so we care for and love ourselves first.

Seems really simple & easy, right? For some of you, maybe. For the rest of us raised to care about, please and even abandon our very selves for others, it is NOT that fucking simple or easy. For some of us, our families, friends, schools, workplaces & society have raised us with and even drilled into us the toxic belief that we must always put others first before ourselves.

It has resulted in our more deeply troubling pandemic of overwhelmed, over-extended and overworked parents, children, teachers, students, bosses, employees, leaders, citizens…of us being hollow, heartless human beings.

We have to ask ourselves now: What good is being “noble” if we become numb to our own selves, our truth, our needs & our yearnings?

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” ~ Jack Kornfield

So we care for and love ourselves first. We do it for ourselves. We do it because we ourselves deserve the love we keep giving everyone else.

We do it because genuinely and unconditionally loving ourselves is how we begin to do the same for others and our whole wide world. The more we honor ourselves, our truth, our needs & our yearnings, the better we become in honoring other people and their own truth, needs & yearnings. The care & love we learn to give ourselves ultimately becomes the care & love we give to the people in our lives and the rest of the world. That’s the honest-to-goodness truth about being more self-ish and self-loving our world sometimes fails to teach us and what we must learn and practice ourselves, over and over again and moment by moment.

“I will take care of me for you, if you will take care of you for me. ” ~ Jim Rohn

So now, if we need to rest for a few hours or days because we’ve been carrying what feels like the weight of the whole goddamn world, we just do it. If we need to take a break from social media for a few days or an entire season, we just frickin’ do it. If we need to let go of some habits, fears & people, by all means, let’s just go ahead and fucking do it!

We just do what we need to do for ourselves now. No asking for permission, no overthinking and no hiding behind excuses. Let’s go ahead and do what we need to do for ourselves no matter what, knowing full well that what we do whole-heartedly and in loving-kindness for ourselves, we do for the rest of the world.

“In the present moment we can always realize that the ground is to develop loving-kindness toward ourselves. As adults, we can begin to cultivate a sense of loving-kindness for ourselves—by ourselves, for ourselves. The whole process of meditation is one of creating that good ground, that cradle of loving-kindness where we actually are nurtured. What’s being nurtured is our confidence in our own wisdom, our own health, and our own courage, our own goodheartedness. We develop some sense that the way we are—the kind of personality that we have and the way we express life—is good, and that by being who we are completely and by totally accepting that and having respect for ourselves, we are standing on the ground of warriorship. ” ~ Pema Chodron

Photo: Sunset-watching at the Mother Nest in boutique glamping hotel THE BIRDHOUSE EL NIDO, in El Nido, Palawan, Philippines (By hotel owner Mark Anthony V. & Team)

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