Teachers' Sharing

“To love yourself or to be loved was a transformation of life. I understood that you had suffered and the sufferings were heavy to you. You had been brave and poured all your efforts for love, and you were hurt by love. I felt sorry to see your pain, yet, I am proud of you because you had walked along the journey with courage. You were still in this process, but you didn’t have to worry about being abandoned and precluded again because love would come to you and complete the transformation process of life journey together with you.” —— Su Xun Hui

“We must stay strong and only depend on ourselves”, this was the common belief shared among us. We were demanded to “be strong” and our social culture also continuously conveyed the message: “You couldn’t survive if you’re not strong and you would be a shame” that frightened us with such belief. Gradually,  the idea of “be strong” had become a shield to our inner-self that kept us from being hurt. With those layers of “protective shield”, it consolidated our ideal self-image which in turns made us refused to look into our real self and the broken parts.

We shaped ourselves by pretending to be strong for a long time but it actually made us became distant from our real self. We always thought that it was conditional to “love ourselves” hence we must be perfect. Otherwise, we didn’t deserve to be loved. We often had been criticized or disliked by others. Thus, our vulnerability has made us to maintain our dignity by setting a high standard on ourselves and refusing to accept failures and weakness in ourselves. Consequently, we were again distant from the idea of “loving ourselves”. There was no doubt that the idea of “be strong” could help us to overcome the difficulties and challenges in our lives, however, it couldn’t enrich our lives and inner-self.

Had you ever thought that, “Why were my emotions being controlled by others?”,  “Why did an unfriendly look or cold word of others were able to caused such helplessness and sadness in me?”, “Why were you afraid that others disliked you?”, “Why you had to be a “yes man” to feel secure in a relationship?” and “Why must you did all those to prove your worth?” Perhaps you did not realized the fact that you sought recognition from others to uphold the belief of “I’m perfect”. You wished that it would happen one day but the fact was, it would never happen because deep inside you were the one who disliked yourself the most. You might like yourself when you were affirmed by others, meanwhile, you started to feel disgusted towards yourself when you received disapproval from others. The love you had for yourself was solely depended on the outer world. On the contrary, love was neither that unstable nor conditional.

Therefore, we had to learn about being a caregiver by cultivating the ability to love ourselves and to accept our broken parts. First, we needed to take time and put effort in caring our inner self. With stable and adequate care to our inner self, we were able to affirm ourselves instead of being dependent towards the praises and affirmations of others. We would start to love ourselves and feel happy with our abilities of achieving the energy to give meanings in our lives. We would gradually understand that “appreciation” came from the ability to recognize the efforts being poured into life, as well as the unique talents and qualities of life, thereby we were aware of our own uniqueness and help to develop our potentials and strengths in life course. Once you were willing to treat yourself with compassion and tolerance, you would then learn to deal with pains and give yourself some time for a better transformation.

When you were willing to start over to learn and experience the journey of loving ourselves without irrational expectations of hoping for salvation or response from others, you would then realize we were all the same in this journey of love. Gradually, we would recognize that there was no difference between humans and we desired for the same. We began to know more about our lives as well as others, and understood that sadness, sorrow and pain were parts of our life. We were no longer easily influenced by superficial things that would lead us to overthinking or pre-judgements. Being understanding towards others allowed us to recognize that all of us shared the same human experience and also made us a person with compassion.

Let us became the caregiver for ourselves and experienced the journey of learning about love, and turned the ability of self-care into a kind of thinking, attitude, and action.

—— Ms. Chen