Nomitkon, Tajikistan — I’d never seen a bread eating cat before. But this cat loved bread. He would practically sit down at the table and wait to be served. The owners would throw him a few pieces and then throw him out of the house, but he would soon sneak back in and continue looking longingly at the loaves.
“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, in his Nobel prize (2017) acceptance speech. (via halcynth)
Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.
If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.
If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.
Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.