“Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others around you.” Sound familiar? If you have ever flown, you’ve heard something similar to this prior to takeoff. Typically, the reference relates to traveling with children but the message is clear. We must be at our best when we seek to help and support others.
Our ability to serve others is directly proportionate to our ability to take care of ourselves first. I’m not talking about self-absorption. I’m talking about healthy self-love, self-care. We have been told . . . taught that the needs of others far outweigh our own. We have been led to believe that blind benevolence is the highest form of service. Perhaps the worst offenders are certain factions of our collective religious faiths. They tell us that the best we can do is put others before and above us. As obvious as this may appear, it is not.
The Christian Scripture says we are to “love one another in the same manner in which we love ourselves.” And therein lies the problem. Most of the time we do love our neighbor in the same manner we love ourselves, which isn’t very much! The evidence is all around us. We use and manipulate and undermine our neighbor. We lie to, battle with and undercut our neighbor at every turn. We treat our neighbor as our enemy. We serve and give, often in order to get. This is not “putting on our own oxygen mask first.”
The Lakota knew this a long time ago. One part of their Code says, “Be true to yourself first. You cannot nurture and help others if you cannot nurture and help yourself first.” In order to truly help others, in order serve our fellow man, we have to know what it feels like to be loved. When we learn to nurture and help ourselves first, when we pay attention to and care for ourselves first, we operate from an informed perspective. Empathy becomes a more natural response pattern.
This may sound like narcissism but it is not. Healthy self-love/self-care is the the complete opposite. Narcississm may be defined as the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s own attributes. My friend, Dr. Deborah Khoshaba, says, “Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth. Self-love is dynamic; it grows by actions that mature us.” Now there is a definition I can live with!
“You First” is not the label of immaturity or self-absorption. It is the sign of one who operates from a foundation of self-knowledge, self-care and self-motivation. It is the sign of one who truly knows how to give from a full well!
“Be true to yourself first. You cannot nurture and help others if you cannot nurture and help yourself first.”
Peace!
Mark E. Hundley
