The Courage to Accept Yourself

One of my favorite authors is Paul Tillich. He died in 1968, but left some ter­rific books on the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. Many of his works are still used as col­lege text­books today. He had an amaz­ing way of trans­lat­ing Chris­tian­ity into and out of var­i­ous forms of exis­ten­tial­ism. He always had a way of get­ting to the heart of things. One of those things is self-acceptance.
Of all that we reject the most, it is our­selves that tops the list. Learn­ing to accept oth­ers goes nowhere until you learn to accept your­self. You see, all those peo­ple and events that we per­ceive as “out there” have a cor­re­spond­ing place in our own minds and souls. The orphan is not some poor kid down the street, he or she is that lit­tle per­son inside our­selves that per­pet­u­ally feels aban­doned. What irri­tates us most about oth­ers is con­nected to some­thing inside our­selves that we have not solved.
To put it in Bib­li­cal terms, you can­not love the God you do not see until you learn to love the peo­ple that you do see. Not easy! It was not designed to be easy, and it is not accom­plished by chang­ing oth­ers to fit your inner cat­e­gories of accep­tance. No, the inner cat­e­gories have to be expanded. In time, we come to learn and accept peo­ple apart from their actions or their soci­o­log­i­cal “places” in life.
I some­times won­der how much of myself I still reject. When I am in they gym I won­der if I am doing it for my health, or my ego, or because I do not like the way I look. There are times when I get on my own nerves. I pester myself with trivia. I obsess on things I can­not change. If some­one did that around me, I would get onto them. I hate it when peo­ple repeat the same old sto­ries that I have heard many times before, then I catch myself doing exactly the same thing. Am I really that stuck?
Paul Tillich linked self-acceptance to courage. It takes a brave per­son to accept the self in its entirety — flaws and all — but there is also a great sense of relief when it is accom­plished. Peo­ple become far less annoy­ing. World events do not seem so threat­en­ing. Accept­ing our own accep­tance is a key ingre­di­ent in lov­ing God, neigh­bor, and self.