Oooh this was an interesting writing prompt. It really was. I had to think about it long and hard. At first, I was like well, my son of course. And yes, he absolutely is one of my three most favourite people. I adore him. But then I decided I wanted to think a bit more differently than that. Because with my son is also my husband and my mother (sometimes, frankly). But that’s just too…easy. I could talk about the sometimes comment about my mother, but that’s not the essence of this prompt for me. And then I realised that I was completely missing from that list. Surely, any list of your three most favourite people has to start with you, doesn’t it? At that point, the resistance to my thought kicked in. Which was then that I realised what I wanted to write about from this prompt to write through that resistance and see what came out of the other side.
Why are we so resistant to putting ourselves first? To saying immediately in response to this, ‘my three most favourite people are me…’ followed by whoever else you choose. When you really think about it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with including yourself on that list. Nothing at all. If you don’t value you, it’s very difficult for anyone else to. And you are amazing. Knowing that, believing that is not arrogant. It isn’t ‘big-headed’. It is a statement of fact. We are all amazing, every single one of us in our completely individual ways. We are the perfect embodiment of whatever our belief process is about what created us. In the greater scheme of things, the reality of our conception is nothing short of a miracle (I read somewhere once that the odds of winning the lottery were better than of being conceived) and so our existence is miraculous. Why can’t we celebrate that? Why do we take that for granted? We are incredibly fortunate to be on this earth, in the spiritual belief system, our souls chose to be here in the first place. We chose to have a human existence in order to learn and grow. So, in that process why can’t we be one of our three most favourite people?
Life – whether we believe we chose it or not – delivers us some hard blows, it can certainly knock us off our perch to the extent that we may think we don’t like ourselves very much. Perhaps we make decisions and do things that we regret or, with hindsight, lead us to think it was the wrong choice. I know I have done things that I have spent far too many years punishing myself for. These things we have done can mean we would not pick ourselves to be one of our three most favourite people. Perhaps even quite the opposite. Too often, though, we don’t go into that level of introspection and harbour and carry that self-loathing without even realising it. A self-loathing which colours every decision we make after that and which shapes how we see the world. We might see the world as a scary place, a difficult and negative place where only bad things happen. That life is an ongoing and difficult battle that only ends when we do. And if that is what we believe – knowingly or not – that is the world we will experience. If we dislike ourselves, we will invariably dislike the world in some sense and we will receive all the evidence to prove ourselves absolutely correct. Especially if we believe everything our five senses tell us as being utterly and completely, objectively true. Yet if we take the example of Marmite – that you either love it or hate it – our five senses can’t be objective, can they? Because we would either love or hate all the same things, wouldn’t we? And we don’t experience everything through our five senses. We don’t experience love through our five senses, for example. Or happiness. Our five senses might bring us smells, sights, sounds, sensations that bring happiness but those things alone are not what happiness is about. Happiness is a choice that we make outside of our five senses, rather through our belief systems.
BUT, if we were to be one of our three most favourite people what would the world look like? Would we see that it is full of potential and possibility for us? A world of opportunities because we approach everything from the fundamental premise of it being a positive experience? What does being one of our three most favourite people even look like? For me, it means being authentic to myself. It means taking care of myself at a physical and psychological level and for me personally it also means taking care of myself at a spiritual level. It means knowing my worth and not being afraid to express that and holding myself to it. Not in a way that is disparaging of others, not at all. But in a way that respects me. It means being part of a wider collective, feeling connected and attempting to overcome fear. It means understanding when I am thinking through my egoic mind and being aware of my reactions to others as well as how I might be perceived by them. So, trying to show emotional intelligence though I can get as swept up in something mindlessly as the next person. But then I will sit back and reflect on my behaviour, taking it as a learning experience and trying my best not to repeat it.
Look, I’m not a saint. I have tolerance for all those who have tolerance for me, but I am not tolerant of those who do not have tolerance for me. I don’t care if you are, to coin my beloved grandfather’s phrase, skybluepink, if you worship at the feet of the goddess of shopping and you are sexually attracted to either or both sexes. Because your preferences do not impact on me. It’s your life, you’re free to live it as you please. Your happiness with your choices, in my belief, has a beneficial impact on the collective consciousness so go for it. Just give me the same respect in how I live my life and don’t try to encroach on my freedoms. Your way of life is no more or less right than my own. I do firmly believe that we are all one, that we are all connected to each other and to everything. So, I would much prefer it if we all got along swimmingly doing what makes us happy but in a spirit of respectfulness of the collective. That we don’t all have to believe the same thing.
I think Marmite is the food of the devil. My husband thinks it’s the food of the gods. We happily co-exist in those beliefs and we even have jars of the stuff in the house – as long as it is applied with its own, separate, utensil. So, I am unashamedly one of my three most favourite people. As for the other two…outside of my family, I struggled to pick any at the moment! I sincerely hope that position changes in the not-too-distant future.
Louisa Simpson 