love as thy wish to be loved

Sometimes I feel that I am insufficient for other people. This is by no means a permanent feeling, but I do sometimes slip into moments of mild self-loathing and feel so completely "less" than everyone else. I look at where people are going to school, who they are interning with, what awards and scholarships and degrees they've received, how much weight they've lost, how happy they are in their relationships with their parents, boyfriends, siblings, how satisfied they are in their salaries and workplace, and I just think "I don't have that. I'm not good enough for that." When people share with me the hurts and stresses in their life, I don't know what to say, I don't know how to offer comfort to them, I feel wholly insufficient to be there for them. When people tell me about the wonderful things happening to them, I don't know how to be excited with them, I feel, again, insufficient.

I don't know what to say, I don't know how to act, I don't know how to be smarter, I don't know how to get a better job or get into grad school, I don't know how to be a better person. There is so much that I am not. There is so much in myself that I draw comparisons with other people, and it almost always leaves me feeling a heavy sense of inadequacy. No one wants to be inadequate.

When did I learn to compare myself to others? When did I learn that I need to be as good or better as someone else to have value and worth? Who taught me that?

I know that as a whole, our society is highly comparative. Women are bombarded with ads featuring sexy, skinny, flawless underwear models just as men are thrust into a world of hyper-masculine, muscled, sexually charged jean guys. Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are role models, the janitors that clean their offices are not. Yale is better than Georgia State is better than ASU is better than Aiken Tech. Size 2 is better than size 16; normal is better than abnormal. But amid the conclusions being drawn about people in the mass of people called society, where in all of that did I learn to make those conclusions applicable to myself? I have no conscious memory of saying to myself, "this is the time to start realizing that the blond haired skinny girl is better than you," but it happened around 6th grade or so. I realized quite gradually that I was a "dork" and "fat" and "unstylish" and "unpopular." And in middle school, when you are those things, it means you are unloved. But I'm not in middle school anymore. I don't have people whispering behind my back, pointing at my shoes. I'm not even in high school anymore, with boys looking right through me to the girl with a prettier profile.

And yet I'm still drawing conclusions. I still feel that I need to be more of something, and less of something else to be considered worthy of the love that other people can give to me. Why do I and countless scores of other people feel that the evaluations other people hold of us carries any substantial weight at all? I'm not saying that the opinions of other people are devoid of value, I'm saying that they shouldn't be the foundation of my own sense of self-worth. When I see that someone is doing better at a better university than I am, I shouldn't feel like my own personal value has decreased at all. I shouldn't feel like less of a person when someone more beautiful walks by. I shouldn't feel like I should have to change at all when I talk with someone who has a better paying job than I have.

You would think that when I am feeling so completely inadequate for the world that an otherworldly, indiscriminatory, complete love would be undeniably attractive to me. But instead I've found that when I can't love myself, I can't accept the love that others offer me, even the overwhelming love that Christ offers me. How illogical is it that I should disregard the warmth of love that people offer to me daily in favor of lonely hours of self-doubt? The proverbial "Golden Rule" (also Matthew 7:12) says that we should treat other people as we wish to be treated; I see that also as we should love as we wish to be loved. I also see that as a rule of reciprocity--I can only be loved as well as I love. The first step in finding a pure, holy kind of love is to love people without filters. Love them wholly, for who they are. Love myself, for who I am, not what I am not.