I was thinking about how everyone wants someone they can count on and call their own. But how much of anyone can you actually lay claims to. Is it your lover? He or she is owned by a family, has bits of themselves which belong to friends. They've had a history and a life apart from you with solid memories built around other events you know nothing about. So how much of them do you really have all to yourself? Even the creator of the universe does not belong exclusively to one person. He or she or whatever/whomever you believe in, is a public creator.
I wondered then, who then can you know? "Know thyself", Socrates said. I know we can never fully know ourselves, but I thinking we can lay claim to ourselves than most people. We can be lovers of ourselves as we spend the most time alone with our thoughts and in our bodies. There's no one equipped as ourselves to pay us the attention we crave, to be concerned about our wellbeing. We know what makes us uncomfortable because we have first hand sensation of the things that trigger us. Other people have to be ask. They have to be told what's bothering us and will always in this sense remain second hand knowers of us with all its limitations.
If we have all the resources at our disposal; the gaze we crave for from others, the attention we can give, the care, politeness, kindness. Heck, I can give myself a compliment anytime I wish. I just have to think it and it's done. I can tell myself to cheer up at any time. I can go and do the things that comfort me at any time because of my agency. I own my body. That's a lot of underutilized power it seems.
I understand that it's nice to have someone love us. We all need to be cherished by others but I want to believe and begin to advocate that it should only be as a booster and not our primary thing to clutch on. Without anyone else, and with the creativity in us, can we not birth a new environment where we can take the reigns and just be with ourselves and cherish ourselves without worrying about who's paying us any attention? That's something to think about.
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