Loved

This past summer I did a “values” activity. The activity was this - there was a stack of 100 values cards. Each card had a different value, such as “family”, “money”, “world peace”, “honesty”, “self control”, and “loved”. My job was to go through the stack and place the cards into 3 different piles. One pile was “Extremely Important”, one was “Somewhat Important”, and the last was “Not Important”. It sounds like a simple task, but I had such a hard time fitting them into categories! There were so many values that I wanted to put in between extremely and somewhat important, but those weren’t the rules. I was then informed that I had to discard all the of values in the “Somewhat Important” pile and the “Not Important” pile. My heart broke a little, but I do like to follow the rules, so I did what I was told. I then had to narrow it down to my top 10 values, and then place those values in order from least to greatest. The purpose of the activity to was to identify what I find most important in my life. My top 10 values, from what I can remember, were these: order, self-control, family, friendship, popularity, compassion, safety, dependability, faithfulness, and LOVED. My number one value turned out to be “loved”.

As a human being, we all have a need to be loved. It’s the core of who we are. Most of us experience love, whether it be from a family member, a friend, or a pet. I have had no shortage of love in my life, let me be clear. I never felt unloved as a child, in fact sometimes I could probably say that I felt overloved. And I have never had a problem with loving. I tend to love hard. However I seem to have an insatiable need to be loved. I could be in a room surrounded by people who love me and care for me, and I still feel like something is missing. Which brings me to my point…I believe that a person must love themselves before they can receive love from others. I know that sounds cheesy, but the book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” states, “we accept the love we think we deserve”. And I believe this to be so incredibly true. I will admit that I have problems with self confidence and self love, and I honestly believe that because I don’t fully love myself, I have a hard time feeling completely loved. I have always had a hard time accepting help or acts of kindness from others. I have friends who constantly tell me “please let me do this for you”, “please let me show you love the best way I know how”, or my personal favorite “I want to help you. Don’t rob me of that joy!” The fact is, I don’t know that I will ever feel “satiated” with love until I learn to love myself fully, for all of my flaws and imperfections!