Rudeness, disrespect for each other, passivity. Or narcissism, narcissism,
indifference. All this from our inability to love ourselves.
For many years I watched people and after myself before writing what I will write now. Many, if not all the failures and misfortunes of our person occur because he failed to love himself. It would seem what the problem is here? Everyone treats himself well or even excellent, all of us, in the end, reasonable or unreasonable egoists.
But it’s not about that.
The second commandment of Christ “love your neighbor, as himself” turned out to be not only exorbitantly difficult, but also not fully understood. Verbal, that is, effective, requiring effort, only the first part of the phrase was presented: “Love the neighbor”. And “himself” lingered in a passive shadow, as a granted. It was not there.
The petitioner in the office or in the office apologizes a thousand times, looks at everyone prepared with loving eyes, jumps helpfully with the lighter. The guy with glasses fusses in front of the elevator, passes everyone, passes and once again the only one is left before the call button. Grandmother in the market asks to weigh four potatoes (here from here, dear). The ruddy girl at first does not notice her, then he still decides to explain herself: “Well, what are you looking at me like a worm at a vegetable? Yes, I will not fuck behind four potatoes and ass. “.
And the old woman (here is the horror!) I was not angry, not offended at least, but nodded knowingly, slightly ingratiatingly, but outwardly shitty, making it clear that it was able to evaluate the burdension of her request, and said: “And I will also take the carrots”.
The years of tsarism, then Stalinism and all forms of Sovietism, I understand. They say: slave psychology. Or just tough, repressive education in the family. Everything is possible. But I want to go from the other side: we do not know how to love ourselves.
Here’s another row. Two comrades have fun in the middle of the sidewalk, they are bypassed along the roadway. These certainly value only themselves, only they love themselves. A peppy old woman scatters the crowd, moving to the counter or to the steps of the minibus. Doesn’t she love herself? The saleswoman, or the secretary, or the face in the service window chatting chatting with someone about the mushroom season, about the “shock” hat in the next boutique, about yesterday’s weekend, with amazing endurance ignoring the worried queue. Well, how, you think, she belongs to herself?
All this is obvious. How obvious is the fact that the gospel commandment speaks of something else.
To love yourself is not narcissism, not love for your appearance, flesh, for your autonomous space. This is a love for the best in yourself, for high, if you want. We are most often noble in our thoughts, in the actions of the flat things, but, having loved thoughts, we give them a reality of actions, and there is hope that they will turn into actions if we love them and value them. Then we can love another for the best, albeit not realized yet. We will evaluate it on the scale of our own aspirations. And so, a bad person is looking for and finds excuses and meanings in his behavior. It is not hard. His paradise is in the hole of deception and curvature. The remarkable thinker of the twentieth century Ukhtomsky once said: “The rogue and deceiver will see the rogue and deceiver, when Socrates or Christ passes before him: he is not able to recognize Socrates or Christ and when he is face to face with them”. That’s what the trick is!
The green traffic light goes out faster than a person with a stick or a child can cross the road. People humiliately pass the avenue skipping. Who measured this time?
The turntable in the subway beats passengers from the causal place. Who so guessingly measured her height?The doors in the subway close, cutting the crowd.
The seductive woman was drunk with heels along the corridor, in a rustling short dress, with golden bracelets on the wrists, and an extinct came out of the office. She had just been issued a pension certificate “Old Age”.
This is small and large rudeness at every step. Here they would also stand civil society, here they are talking about dignity, about the humanization of the social sphere, about human rights. Everything is undoubtedly so. But human rights and dignity are a consequence. A person must first love himself. The absence of this feeling is not hidden by shocking behavior, nor arrogance, nor merry, nor politeness. People accurately determine a person who, in their depths, is ready for neglect and even humiliation.
The amazing episode was preserved in Pushkin’s notes: “I met with Nadezhdin at Pogodin. He seemed to me very common, Vulgar, bored, arrogant and without any decency. For example, he raised a scarf, I was damaged by me “.
It would seem that there is a shameful? Serve a scarf Pushkin. But the poet has a sharp eye on the quality of a person who does not love himself and is ready to humiliate.