Do you love yourself enough?

{ At the outset, let me clarify, my state of mind is fairly clear, but my writing is more than a little muddled. Its simple writer's block and will wane in time. Until then, don't give up hope on me - not yet! Ill bounce right back in a week or so with some gems :) }

Its a thin line like so many others. Do we really love ourselves enough?

Genesis of the question is well - friends who practically kill themselves working hard and long hours, friends who lose who they are completely because they're trying so hard to become worthy of somebody else's conditional love, friends who're so caught up in pleasing other friends that they simply cannot decline invitations to social gatherings, vacations and events that they personally couldn't care less about but their friends love so much.

Which makes me wonder, where do we cross the line from being a good employee, an adjusting partner and a understanding friend to losing our identity, space and soul for someone else, sometimes in the vain hope that if we change enough for them, they'll sit up, take notice and do the same themselves OR simply cause we never thought there was a better way?

In my rant about 5 key life roles, i'd mentioned that some people consciously call out one key role as the 'self'. I'm one of them. Is this because i'm more enlightened than others? Nah!!! Its coz if i didnt make this a conscious choice, then i'd get even more sucked up into doing things and living my life for other people and for my job. And then id wake up at 50 and go "CRAP!!, what did i do for myself all these years?", coz there's no guarantee anything else will stay. Jobs change, friends come and go, spouses are maybe somewhat more permanent, but their undying interest in your life and activities will wane at some point right? And then what? You'll realize too late that everything you naively built a life around and constructed dreams around has vanished and you've got nothing to call your own.

So my advice to people who feel like they spend more than 90% devoted to things outside of themselves, let there always be something you do that constitutes the core of who you really are - an activity that lets you discover inner talents, special friends who cherish the core of you as it is with no ulterior motives to change you, a hobby that makes u feel energized and worthwhile, anything that makes you touch base with YOU. Yes you're always going to feel like a good reason to give it up - a demanding job, insistent friends and the like, but a current intervention is always more useful than some future regret :-)