Do You Really Love Yourself?

The Credit Card Bill I Couldn't Open

I had a very big dread of credit card bills. This sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but when I was a student I was so paralyzed by the mere thought of looking at the bill that I didn't pay them — and accrued a lot of interest I didn't have to pay.

As an international student with limited scholarship and financial aid options, me running out of money meant further straining my already strained parents' finances. They could have stopped paying for my education or covering my living expenses. I was a grown man and I could have made it with roommates and lower standards of living.

But I was hanging out with richer Koreans and didn't want to seem less than, so I forced myself to live this mirage of a life that was never mine. Since my family kept supporting my delusion, I suffered from it until I finally graduated.

That carried over when I became the breadwinner of my family. Before, when I was running low, I had somewhere to lean on. But as — again — a fully grown man, I wanted to take care of my own expenses. And again, I could have lowered my standard of living. Instead I made this ridiculous excuse of "my wife deserves better" to try and afford a higher-cost lifestyle.

The Reframe That Changed Everything

A lot of things happened and I was working with a life coach about my life. Since bills have to be paid every month, this topic naturally came up. I was still freezing at the thought of opening the credit card bill. I hated looking at an unusually high bill and trying to justify each line item. It always came with a dose of "you stupid man, shouldn't have spent that money."

The perspective my coach offered me was this: when you love your wife, don't you spend money on her? For gifts and other things she values? So each line in the credit card bill is an expression of love for yourself. Because you love yourself so much, you're buying all these things for you. You just didn't appreciate the credit card bills that way.

Beyond Proof

While the above reframe is wonderful, do we really need to spend money on ourselves to prove that we love us? Real love doesn't even require proof, does it?

We already love ourselves. Now let's see it.

This will be a bit of a Seon exercise.

What Love Actually Is

In general, there is a consensus around the idea of love: love is not transactional, it is unconditional. We don't require the other person to change. We just let them be.

When we love nature, we love nature for how it is — we don't request the outdoors to get plastic surgery or a liposuction. When parents love their infant children, they don't demand that they start walking and do chores from day one. The baby can poop, cry, generally raise hell — and the parents will let the baby be.

Yet at times we demand that we change. We may get plastic surgery. We may change our fashion. We may try to reshape our personality. We may try to make more money. And throughout the process, when things don't go as planned, we resent ourselves.

The Illusion of Self-Hatred

When we modify our body, are we modifying us or are we modifying our body? All we're doing is modifying our body, which will just wither away in the next 100 years. If I think I'm too poor, does that actually make me poor? You can tell me "Billy, you're an ass" — but unfortunately that does nothing to make me an ass. I just am.

So even when we have some resentment towards us, we are resenting an idea of us — not the actual us. Who are you? No matter how many times I try to answer that question, the answer is always not comprehensive and not fully encapsulating what I am as a lived experience.

Even if I end my life, this still applies. Just because I don't end my life, it doesn't mean I was going to be immortal in the first place. Just because I attempted to end my life doesn't mean I will succeed. As long as I am alive, I love myself.