The Most Important Relationship

Last week I wrote about relationships. But the one relationship I left out was the most important one of all... your relationship with yourself.
It seems like the most important relationship is the one we ignore the most. We spend less time on taking care of ourselves than we do taking care of others. We've been taught that it's selfish to put ourselves first. In reality, that's exactly what we all SHOULD be doing. If you don't "feed" yourself, you will have nothing to give to anyone else. You need to eat and exercise so you have physical strength. You need to read, play games, have intellectual and philosophical discussions to exercise and feed your brain. You should pray, meditate, be in nature to feed and exercise your soul. THEN you will be ready and able to be of service to others without depleting yourself. Even in an airplane they tell you that in case of emergency put YOUR oxygen mask on first, THEN help others.

We also seem to have a hard time forgiving ourselves. It's easier to forgive others for hurts or perceived hurts, but we just can't seem to extend that same kindness to ourselves. It's like we can't forgive ourselves for being human. As humans, we're going to make mistakes. That's inevitable. But after making the mistakes and after asking for forgiveness from those we may have hurt, we HAVE to forgive ourselves.

The most important lesson I tried to teach my children while they were growing up is this: You can run away from anyone or everyone. You can be a hermit in the forest and never see another human being the rest of your life. But the one person you can't run away from is yourself. No matter where you go, YOU will be there with YOU. So make sure that's someone you like.

Love, Paula