Life is about service to yourself. Life is not about service to others.
I know I have said this before in various essays and in various ways, but it bears repeating, especially since the vast majority of my writing is aimed at women. One of the biggest drains on women’s health is their constant serving of others without serving themselves. Common sense and dozens of studies show that women are still the primary caregivers of their children, even in two parent homes. Women are the primary caregivers of ailing parents, and quite often of ailing husbands. Women take more shit at work than men and do the majority of housework at home.
Stress. Stress. Stress. Stress.
Service to Others
We not only do it all, but we think we have to. Society tells us, all of us, not just women, that life is service to others. That your job is to take care of everyone else. That taking care of others will actually make you happier. That it is unnatural not to serve others.
I have been reading about this concept a lot lately. I have had this discussion with several of my friends. One friend in particular and I have disagreed about this several times, and I just recently figured out where our real bone of contention was.
She explained to me that when she was in recovery as an alcoholic, helping others stay sober helped her stay sober.
Okay. I get that. Getting outside of your own head when you’re in a dark place can give you new perspective. Staying busy to stay out of a funk makes sense.
But when I explained my position, that I see all these people, primarily women, of course, running around taking care of everyone else and quite literally dying, killing themselves in the process, and so it makes no logical sense to me that life would be about service to others. Life is not, I still believe quite firmly, about being born in order to give everything you ever have to everyone outside of yourself, dying an empty shell who served well.
No.
I believe, deeply, that life is about being happy.
So, if serving others bring you joy, if it truly makes you happy, then yes, your life is about service to others. But that is not true for everyone, nor does it have to be.
Interconnected Humanity
This core belief system doesn’t mean I am uninterested in others, or even uninterested in serving others. I love helping people. I love giving to my children. I love keeping house, cooking and cleaning, shopping and budgeting for my family. But these are things I actually enjoy. I’m not forcing myself to love it or find joy in it. I chose this life. I am enjoying it.
We can also find joy in each other without necessarily “serving others.” There is virtually no job or lifestyle that doesn’t involve other humans in some way. So we can find joy in interacting, in sharing our experiences, in communicating and in loving. But I want to eradicate this notion that we are here in this life to serve anyone other than ourselves.
Get Happy – Then Do Anything Else You Have Time For
Even if you have chosen a life of service to others, you cannot serve from an empty vessel. You have to get happy first to really go out and serve. Realize that when we reference Mother Theresa, for example, we are referencing a nun. Nuns live lives dedicated to prayer, silence, and devotion. Mother Theresa took the time to refill her vessel through her own personal quiet time with God. She took care of herself first. Her connection to God came first. She took care of everyone else after that.
I saw this post earlier today as an admonishment that we do not exist for ourselves but for others:
I disagree. Profoundly.
I believe that the river does exist for itself. It is a happy fact of nature that we all benefit from our shared experiences, so the river flows and others benefit from its flow. But the river benefits from its flow too. In fact, if the river gets blocked, it dies. It is no longer a river. So now, it can’t serve anyone. Same goes with the flower, with the sun, with the trees. We exist to grow, to love, to live, to expand. We do not exist to serve others. We certainly can serve others, and quite often it feels great, but it is not our purpose in life.
Get happy. Then do anything else you have time for after that.
Self Love
And so here is the point I’m really getting at: you really cannot love anyone else until you love yourself. You learn how to love by loving yourself. We have been so conditioned, so trained by society that loving yourself is pride, ego, or selfish, and sure, I suppose, when you think about people only caring about themselves, only serving themselves, or worse, hurting others in order to serve themselves, and if you think that is what the definition of self love is, then yes, it is all those negative things.
But that is not self love. A person who loves him or herself, the real deep down kind of love that is forgiving and pure and good and can stand in the light, does not, cannot hate anyone else. Love is good and only good. Love is the kind of good that needs no definition. Love is not subjective or conditional. When you love yourself like that, you want to spread it around and share. That is when you want to serve others.
But it has to start with the self.
And so I implore anyone and everyone reading this to do this work, if you do no other work: love yourself. Start with liking yourself. Start with accepting yourself. Start with just not hating yourself.
Meet yourself where you are, take a good long look, and get comfortable.
Go from there.
I think if we taught this to kids in school before we taught them Reading and Writing and Arithmetic we would have a whole different world on our hands.
And you know what’s great? All it would take is one generation. One generation of parents working on loving themselves and teaching their kids to love themselves.
Even better, each of us can start today. We can sign up, every single day, recommit to live a whole hearted life every single day, one driven by love and an impulse to help others find the love within themselves.
Your love can manifest in infinite ways, right down to the way you breathe. And love is infectious. It’s a virus. Love yourself deeply and others will be inspired to do the same.
This. This self love, this full vessel spilling over deep acceptance and forgiveness, compassionate, fully awake love is what happily ever after looks and feels like.
This is happily ever after.
“Even if you have chosen a life of service to others, you cannot serve from an empty vessel. You have to get happy first to really go out and serve.”
This is such an important reminder because I feel that a lot of people DO want to serve and help others, but you have to make sure you are in a place to do it!
Interesting take and I understand and respect your point of view. I’m like your friend and have a different point of view regarding service to others. It’s a matter of balance for me.
I love your honesty and bluntness of your posts. I spent a lot of time trying to make others happy, especially at work. What I learned is that by doing so, you no longer focus on self and before you know it – stress takes over and then you breakdown in all aspects – mentally, physically, emotionally. I have been learning that the hard way for the past couple of year but getting there!
I have often found that I am energized by service to others. But, I can’t do it if I don’t take care of my needs, both health and emotional, first. I think it is really tempting to help others first, but than we really do a disservice to them and ourselves because we don’t have much to give, and nothing left to take care of ourselves at the end.
Well written and so much rings true – we have to allow ourselves to focus on ourselves first. Harder to do.
I definitely agree with the concept of self-love!
I agree with you that you need to love yourself before you can love someone else. I’ve seen this over and over again in my life.
I agree women do burn out serving everyone else. While giving is important, balance is even more important.
I agree that taking care of yourself will make you better equipped to care for others.
This is such a great post. Many people with benefit from this. There are so many that get caught up in the same thing day after day and don’t realize that there is no time for themselves. Thank you for a great post.
Hmmm….interesting perspective. I don’t think I can fully agree with what you’re saying, but I can see where you are going with it. I do believe that caring for one’s self is important and crucial in order to care for others in that we need to demonstrate that we respect the human body, human spirit ~ and that we also need to be healthy in order to do so. However, I am someone – at the risk of sounding an alarm – do not understand the concept of loving myself, but do ~ with all my heart, soul, strength and everything else inside me ~ unconditionally love my boys, my husband, my family and my friends. I absolutely LOVE to serve the people we meet where we volunteer, my neighbors who may be in need, etc. Again, I see where you are coming from and where you are going…but I don’t think it’s an absolute. So, I respectfully agree to disagree on some points?? Well written, though!
I just always love your comments! And yes, I have actually heard this from many people, not surprisingly women: “I don’t know how to love myself. I’m not sure I ever will. So I focus on others, and I can love them.” I personally do not understand that. But I don’t have to in order to value your perspective and love you for it. I one hundred percent agree that there are no absolutes. TM, I think we might be best friends. Haha.