Quotes From Aristotle: Part Five

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

We often have a tendency to dislike ourselves.

By this I mean we look at ourselves in the mirror too often. At first we might be okay with what we see, but then we begin looking deeper. A somewhat symmetrical face and beautiful skin become unbalanced eyes, a weirdly shaped nose, a chin that juts out too much, an overbite, and skin that’s damp with oils and filled with acne.

My point in this is that we often look at ourselves too much and we start to pay too close attention to detail. We might see things about ourselves that we like at first but then we search for things we dislike and we decide to think of ourselves as ugly as a result of it. The same thing happens with our psyche, our ego, our soul, mind, spirit, whatever you want to call it.

We look at ourselves and we’re satisfied. We might have a few things we feel like we need to change but we know we’ll get there eventually and we aren’t too worried about it. Then after thinking about it for too long we start to think about our insecurities, our fears, the things that stress us out, and the things we choose to hate about ourselves. After that we suddenly dislike ourselves. We start to define ourselves based off of what we see, and we choose to see negative things if we look too long. It’s just how human minds work.

There’s two main solutions to this, ideally both can be done. The first is to completely and wholly accept yourself, your flaws, and your downfalls, and learn to love those parts of yourself. No matter who you are, you’re flawed. This isn’t me making some bold accusation — it’s me pointing out what everybody already knows. Knowing that everybody is flawed is knowing that you’re just as human as everybody else, and without that we shame ourselves into being closed off and emotionally dead. 

The second solution is to look at yourself as a whole. When you think about it, this is really just a tool to help you accept and love yourself. Seeing yourself as a whole is the difference between seeing the texture of the paint and then backing up and seeing the whole painting, appreciating it’s beauty and imagery and seeing it’s flaws as characteristics that strengthen it’s radiating beauty instead of weakening it. Once you can see yourself as a whole, you can learn to love the things you have. Sure, you might be insecure about public speaking, but the fact that you’ll still do it on occasion shows bravery. You might think you’re a loser and never succeed, but the fact that you still try shows determination. Things cancel out — and positivity almost always comes out on top. On the rare occasions when it doesn’t, it’s important to look inward and try to find out why negativity is beating you. Acknowledging negativity is important, because otherwise we’re hopeless romantics or stupidly optimistic. Despite this, we can’t let it rule our lives.

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