Learn to Love yourself before you want to love someone else.

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Love is an emotion that relates to a sense of strong affection or attachment to another person, thing, or concept. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, ranging from pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction. Because the word love can be used in any number of contexts to describe a complexity of feelings, it is a sentiment that is difficult to define. It is essential to realize that human beings are very complex entities and have a psychological make-up completely different from the other animals on this earth. Human beings are self aware, which is a characteristic that has not been observed to any extensive detail in other species of animal we share this earth with. Self awareness is what sets man apart from the other primates who are genetically similar, but not identical to them. It is through this process of self awareness that man is able to transfer his feelings, thoughts, and emotions onto animate and inanimate objects. If one loves another, he is projecting the love he has for himself onto the person he loves because it would be impossible for him to love another unless he first loved himself. The point is, therefore, that whatever sentiment we have, whether it is love or hate, it all relates to how we feel about ourselves. There are some beings that, for whatever reason, cannot or will not express love to others. These individuals, who reject the love that is being proffered to them, reject it not because they don’t love the person offering the love, but more accurately, they don’t love themselves. A person who does not love himself cannot love others, so it is very important that a person first learn to love himself, thereby enabling him to transfer the love he has for himself to others, which may very well be by the Nazerene made a point of instructing his followers to love their neighbor as they would love themselves. It is very easy to love someone who loves himself because a person who loves himself will make himself loveable. It is much more difficult to love someone who doesn’t love himself because a person who doesn’t love himself will make himself unlovable. Therefore, people who choose to love those who don’t love themselves face a great obstacles if they ever hope to receive anything in return for what they give out because a person who doesn’t love himself has no understanding of how to return the love that is given to him in an appropriate fashion. A quote from the Bible, I Corinthians 13:4-7 is most appropriate for today’s subject on love:- “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”