Should You ♥ You?

"The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era- but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything."

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

We're a long way from the Acid Era, but that hangover hurts worse than ever. Except today the frightened illiterates aren't a subculture- they are the culture. They are all of us.

Not that Liking Yourself is bad or that self-loathing is somehow noble. Of course not. Of course not. But now it seems like everyone doesn't just suspect himself of the cardinal virtues; we're also sure that nobody else possesses them. The Self must always be Right and Righteous. The man that disagrees is a European socialist intent on destroying the meager scraps left of the American Dream. The haters just can't handle your phenomenal swag.

But this is total and utter horseshit. Sometimes we are Wrong about things. And sometimes we are also unhappy or unenthused or (gasp) alone. That's fine. If there's anything wrong with being Wrong or Sad or Alone, then a) there's something wrong with being Human; and b) there's something wrong with Truth. That's terrifying.

(And then there's the more complicated issue of wanting Other People to Like Us so we can confirm that we are worthy of being Liked by Ourselves. It's the goal of every advertiser pimping consumerism as the Way to Happiness, of every passive-aggressive bitch posting man-hating Facebook statuses in search of self-affirming comments, of every no-good two-bit snake-oil salesman that wants your son to play basketball at the University of Kentucky. It's very complicated, very paranoid, very Nixonian- and damn dangerous. Paradoxically, it also seems to make ourselves less likely to Like Ourselves.)

The takeaway- it's OK to be wrong. Being pissed-off, not knowing what to do or where to go or whether to laugh or cry or both, is totally natural. Liking Yourself is natural too. What isn't OK is cheating yourself. Don't dismiss other people and points of view just because they're different. Don't think your shit smells that much rosier than the other humans you share 99% of your genome with. Take others and their strengths and faults and quirks as they are and find ways to like them, and then do the same with yourself.

Have faith, not fear. And most of all, be real.

(I don't even fully get what I'm saying, so now I will shamelessly ask for y'all to comment and argue with me below. This would affirm that this post was Worth Something, and by extension that I, the writer of this post, am Worth Something, so that in turn I may Like Myself. Plus, I'm always up for a good circlejerk!)