I found this old interview clip with Marlon Riggs on love, self-value, and profound change. The way he speaks is so inspirational and gives you such a different out look on who we are as people. He speaks about how we can not love someone else until we come to terms with ourselves. We need to learn how to love ourselves before we try to love someone else, learn who you are before learning who someone else is and so on. Everyone starts to pick themselves apart from a very young age and its hard to move on and feel content in life until you are comfortable in your own skin. That is the ultimate goal he is speaking on in this video.
Acceptance of one’s self is such a prevalent problem in America. I believe it to be part of the mental health crisis we are going through as a nation. Nobody accepts anyone else because they don’t accept themselves, so people and society get trapped in this negative feedback loop that doesn’t really have an end. I believe people, in general, have been taking steps and making strides to lessen this feeling of outcast in others who feel it. When people don’t feel like they belong anywhere specific, they look for a category to fall into, like some sort of security blanket. Not everyone has to fall into a category, and I think that’s something people need to listen to.
Truthfully I never really stopped and thought about how not loving oneself could cause problems in the world. How one’s interior could have such a reverberating effect on everyone’s exterior. This video really makes me feel like getting up and making a change or helping people see themselves for what they really are. You are what you are and nobody can really define or contain you in a word or otherwise. It’s not scary to stand out to me, but it’s terrifying not to.