Loving Thy Neighbor

I DO NOT HAVE TO LIKE YOU TO LOVE YOU.

Step 1: Love yourself.

Also Step 1: Love thy neighbor.

Loving others is the other most important part of self love because when you extend that same love to those around you, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that with the right people around you the vibes of community are unbeatable. I really feel like that’s a big component missing in most people’s lives. The community. I think we get too far hung up on judging one another and “liking/disliking” others. We don’t have to like each other to love each other from a distance. We don’t have to talk to one another for us to love each other. The misconception of love is that we have to be accepting to a point where we are no longer respecting our own boundaries and that is not self love. I can love my neighbor and wish the best for them in their universes without being physically apart of their worlds. Love can look like so many things. Too often we focus on the romanticized often fleeting love without really understanding the depth of a word like love really is. Love can look like mutual respect. Love can look like me minding my business and respecting the privacy of others. To love is human. To be human is to connect with one another. We can live in community without over-extending our hospitalities. We can live in a world where we might not speak the same language but at the end of the day, I have your back if worst comes to worst and I love you. Will it ever be all world peace? Meh, probably not any time soon but at least in your little corner of the world you can spread a little love to those around you. We don’t have to like each other. We don’t have to hang out. We don’t have to break bread. We don’t have to fake any pretenses or feign some fake feelings but I respect you and your right to live your life full of your own loved ones unbothered from “others”. I love you. I don’t have to like you. Really I feel like if we took the pressure off from each other having to personally like each other or live in some kind of mutual culture, then we would like each other a lot more! Instead of being so focused on figuring out if we agree with each other life decisions or tastes, we would just observe and be like huh…different strokes for different folks as we say in the south. If we did that we wouldn’t have to worry about emulating some false image/self projection that was unauthentic. Like I don’t care if people don’t like me. Not everyone is going to like me. I don’t require everyone to like me. I don’t require everyone to agree with my decisions. Everyone WILL respect me and I WILL respect them. The things I care about are: Can we work together towards a common goal? Are we able to communicate our needs and come to an understanding? Do we respect each other and each other’s boundaries? Do I feel safe around this person? Things like that. If you really think about it, these days most of our time we spend with people we don’t like. On average, a person spends 8-12 hours at work with coworkers that 9/10 they wouldn’t hang with outside of the job place….So why are we focused on whether or not we like people or people like us??? Jesus didn’t say anything about liking everyone you meet! I can love you without liking you. Let’s normalize community love. We can all love each other without the pressure of liking each other.

I love you.

– C Money, the Muse