English
EspañolNo one can be an intimate companion for themselves. If you seek only to please yourself at the expense of others, you are dooming yourself to emptiness and inner solitude; and in the process, you are causing so much pain.
Text
“…symptoms of a “culture of the ephemeral.” Here I think, for example, of the speed with which people move from one affective relationship to another. They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly “blocked… We treat affective relationships the way we treat material objects and the environment: everything is disposable; everyone uses and throws away, takes and breaks, exploits and squeezes to the last drop. Then, goodbye. Narcissism makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves.” (The Joy of Love, n.39)
Commentary
One of the experiences that life over the years has shown us is the frequency with which those who confide in us the suffering and loneliness of their heartbreak ignore a fundamental ingredient of love. They ignore the great metamorphosis. One must transition from the need to be served and satisfied to the capacity to give and receive; it is undoubtedly a Copernican turn. One has to prefer their beloved and their good over their self-centeredness. As long as you prefer “me, myself, and I,” as long as you only seek others because they are useful to you and want them to be at your every need, you simply do not love anyone. You only love yourself.
The price to pay for being locked up in self-love will be loneliness and emptiness that can never be filled. Why this constant inner dissatisfaction? Because one cannot accompany oneself. We do not exist for ourselves but to love other people.
