One day a few weeks ago, I was very happy. Just excited and infatuated with life and myself.
Suddenly, I realized, “I’m in love with myself.”
So I wondered, is this good or bad? Usually we look at people who are in love with themselves as self-centered, so is it a good thing for me to be in love with me?
Having thought about it, I realized that there are two types of love with self, one real and the other not. Narcissistic love, which is the love of self that we frown upon, comes from a place of not knowing the greatness of oneself, so from a place of fear, blowing one self up to hide that fear. This is bad love.
However, when a person gets to know themselves, and senses their true internal self and worth, it is impossible not to fall in love with themselves! And that is love that comes from a place of goodness. In fact, it is this love, that enables us to love others, since if we don’t see and therefore love ourselves, how can we ever truly see and therefore love anyone else?
Interestingly, this is exactly the Story of Narcissus and Echo. Narcissus’s mother asked, if her child would grow old or die young, and was told “If e’er he knows himself he surely dies.”
I skimmed the story, and one could say that the story of Narcissus is the story of one who goes from a false love of self, awakens by looking in the mirror and learns who they are, and comes to love themselves. With that in mind, it is obvious that Narcissus as he was known, would die once he knew himself, since he would then be in love with the true self. Pretty cool, eh?