Hotep!
Love your neighbor as yourself is a scripture in the Bible. The book of Mark chapter 12 verse 31. Most Christians have heard this verse preached in church at some point in their lives; me included. What struck me when I read this scripture this morning was the implication in the scripture. How can I love my neighbor as myself, unless I love myself? Whoa! See most of the time when we hear the message preached from this scripture it is only about the first part of the scripture “love thy neighbor”. We hear that preached often and well. And yes we should love our neighbors but I want to talk about the other part of that scripture; loving ourselves.
We as Africans living in America or in short African Americans, need to be more loving of ourselves. We come from a history or “our-story” where we were taught to love and care for others before we loved and cared for ourselves and our own. We come from a his-story where we were taught to love the children of masters before we were allowed to even think of our own children. And this idea of putting others before ourselves is still part of the mindset of a number of Africans living in America.
We must remember that we ARE love. And we should respect that love. How we think of ourselves, how we “carry” ourselves, how we walk and talk all indicate how much love we have for ourselves. And here is another thing: only after we love ourselves will we be able to love others and be able to truly accept love from others.
I honestly feel that we as Africans living in America will only see real growth in our community after we start to see real self love in our community. We should take a look at our feelings about who we are as individuals and give ourselves a check up on self love. Because a community is no more than individuals multiplied by many. So if you have a community of individuals who do not love themselves you will have a community that has no self love as a whole.
So let's start with the man or woman in the mirror (as MJ has preached in his song) and give ourselves some due attention that's positive.
Hambree!
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