Being lovable

I think I'm more aware, lately, about how self esteem and shame affects the lovability of a person. Only the self decides that it's lovable, but only after being taught or shown how and why it needs to understand that first. At the end of the day, if everyone believed they had a right to be loved, all would be perfect. Shame has a way of actually messing things up, in fact. The reality is that everyone really deserves to be happy, no matter what they've done. Because wising a person ill can only really affect the wisher, not the receiver. Hatred only destroys the hater, not the hated.

This applies to hatred of the self as well. I know that, like many people, I've hated aspects of myself. I've hated myself for being imperfect, for not achieving as much as I might have and so on. I've even hated myself for hating myself, hated myself for being angry and bitter and lazy, and so on. But it's so silly.

At the root of it all - all the self hatred, as well as the hatred of others - is a destructive, demanding ego.

All the business of trying to be lovable: of doing all kinds of things so that a person will be approved of and welcomed, are all giving power away, and inevitably lead to bitterness and rage and hatred.

The truth of the matter is that I don't have to be perfect to be lovable. I don't need to create brilliant art, nor brilliant writing, nor anything great at all in order to be loved. Love isn't conditional on my being brilliant or clever or perfect or nice or happy or successful or anything.

In actual fact, I'm far more likely to be brilliant, or produce beautiful, wonderful art if I'm loved first. It's actually the other way round: when I'm loved, I create the great work.

I don't have to DO anything in order to be lovable. I just have to be who I am.

I had an interesting experience, a few years back, when I was staying at the Tibetan Bhuddist retreat in Spain. I was being told all about love and forgiveness and stuff: about how my immortal soul will find Nirvana when it's worked out all its karmic stuff, when I went for a walk and talked to a man at the top of the mountain. He was sitting up in a little box with a pair of binoculars, watching out for forest fires, drinking coffee and smoking. He asked me where I'd been staying, and I told him I was down in the retreat. He laughed, and said something about all religions being the same: that they bullshit everyone in pretty much the same way.

The thing that I found about this man, though, even with all his smoking and negativity, was that he was real. He seemed so much more real than any of the monks and nuns and lamas down in the retreat. He seemed to just be allowing himself to be a human being, rather than something else that was "extra" the way religious people seem to want to be.

I recognise this same quality in many people: alcoholics, rock and rollers, bikers, smokers, certain kinds of "undesirables" like hobos and such. There's a humanity in them that's so much more direct and real. They don't waffle on about stuff. They just live imperfect, sometimes ugly lives. But they seem so much more real, somehow. My compassion for these broken souls seems that much greater. I don't know why. I guess it's because they are, quite often, more lovable.

Real is more lovable, isn't it? It has no pretences, after all. It makes no claims to be anything more than it is.

I think that's what I mean, again, about the "slickness" factor being so difficult to actually ride. When anything's too slick, too perfect, too well prepared or rounded, it seems to me that something fundamental has been lost.

I remember "falling in love" with a woman a few years back who, in many respects, was perfect in my mind. I'd been living with my girlfriend of nearly seven years who was a smoker and drinker and quite scatty and damaged in many ways, and this new woman was none of those things. She was slim, with a perfect body and perfect face and grace and style and elegance. She behaved in such a way that I felt certain that she would be, for me, everything I really needed in my life. She stood for a kind of self respect that I wanted in my life. So I "fell in love" with her.

But of course all I "fell in love with" was her image. Not who she really was. And at the end of the day, I couldn't actually, really, love her. Because under all the perfection, she wasn't actually lovable. At least to me she wasn't. I only loved the image, the fantasy, what she stood for and what I dreamed about. I had no idea what her imperfections were at all, and she wasn't advertising them, certainly.

She, no dount, had her own needs. But she wan't showing what they were.

It was interesting, because she was, I'm sure, attracted to me in some similar, fantasy way.

I wonder how many relationships are based on these kinds of fantasies?

Being lovable is a strange thing. It must surely really come down, at the end of the day, to being oneself, rather than hiding behind some image.

I was reading about Claudia Schiffer today. She was perhaps the first supermodel, and was my idea of the perfect woman a few years back. She was my fantasy woman. The article went on about how beautiful she is in real life: how adorable, how sexy, how gorgeous and nice she is.

But I can't help thinking: is that who she really is? I mean, doesn't she d0 that to everyone, in a kind of constant, flirting way? Where's the reality in that, especially if there's no imtimacy beyond it? How can she really be lovable, if she's not actually sexually available to me, personally? In this respect, certain "beautiful" women play a power game with many men. They know they can have the men at any time, so they can use and manipulate their men as they wish.

At the end of the day, though, these women aren't lovable at all. They're just trading their love for something else, and fishing for a certain type of man, who can offer them what they want or need.

Funny how that works, though. I wonder if the "really beautiful" people just have contempt for the people who adore them. I mean, who wouldn't, for someone who wants you for your looks and behaviour, and what you've got, rather than for who you really, fundamentally, are?