Reed Haight - "You See the World"

As I sat down to do this project I thought to myself, What is the most important thing I have learned this year? I considered all of the novels and short stories and essays we read, all of the lectures and video clips and movies we watched and every discussion we had. It hit me that, although we didn’t really explicitly discuss it, self-love was at the core of everything, typically, it was lacking.

In all three novels, the characters felt that they were unworthy unless someone was in love with them. Each character was incapable of generating that deep level of love for themselves and, thus, none of their love was what Sternberg would call “consummate love,” (if you recall from my research paper last semester). Instead, any love that the characters managed to get at was more along the lines of desire and there was always a sense of emptiness within them.

Thinking about all of this, I started considering what I have gone through in the few years and, especially, what I have learned from all of it. Although it has been a difficult year for me, I have come out of it much stronger than I was going in. So, I asked myself why? What has changed within me that made all of those terrible things in my past suddenly seem bearable when they were not a year ago? The answer could not have been clearer: self-love.

I had gone from loathing myself and criticizing every little thing I did, allowing the perfectionist in me free reign, to working my way towards mental and emotional peace. I have begun truly appreciating everything within myself, the flaws, the strengths, the weaknesses, everything. Through this self-love, I have found such serene peace and happiness that I am almost always bursting with it! Although there is still a long way to go on my journey within self-love, I have made immense progress and it has changed my life.

Bringing this back to the class, I chose to write a poem about this self-love (the woman in the poem representing myself), because earlier in the year, although I hate to admit it, I was more like the characters in those books. Although I wouldn’t have gone nearly as far as any of them did in the search for fulfillment through another and I was far more aware of the impossibility of another fulfilling me, I was certainly relying on outside sources to show me my own worthiness. Now, though, I have found that I am not only deserving of love, both inside and out, but I am love.