One thing I have realized in my travels through this world is that you don’t have to like yourself in order to be happy with your life- but you do have to like what you do. The principals you live by. The choices you make on the daily. It’s a realization that makes the key ingredient to happiness not self esteem directly, but rather will power. Which can be exercised; strengthened.
People who dislike themselves, and have no control over themselves- people who wrecking-ball from one urge or craving to the next with very little conscious choice in what they are doing, are insufferable. The emotionally erratic abusive boyfriend or homeless drug addict. You can come back from that place, but it’s about the worst place to be I think as a human, for both you and everyone in the world that has to deal with you.
Nobody is perfect. Everyone has different minor personal flaws, and those minor personal flaws often shape the minor personal flaws we can tolerate in someone else.
There is no one in the world that bothers us more than people with the same flaws we dislike in ourselves. And there is no one in the world more attractive to us than people with flaws (the more the better) that we couldn’t care less about- even more than people who lack those flaws, yet remain perfect in the ways we might also idealize.
The best pairing, I think, is a person with flaws that overlap directly with the other person’s strengths- and vise versa. Someone who is patient and sturdy but dull and boring will pair perfectly with someone who is nervous and anxious but whimsical and exciting.
Even just on the level of physical beauty. A person with no flaws might be lovely, but add a big nose, or a receding hair line, and it’s like an accent mark that makes all the rest pop. So, at the end of the day, it’s ok to have flaws- nobody is perfect- and it’s OK not to like yourself, so long as you make good choices and like what you do. Because your flaws are a key ingredient in what someone will require, one day, to fall madly in love with you.
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