The Self Is A Terrible God

The self matters.

I want to say that clearly because otherwise everything I say next will be misunderstood.

Therapy matters. Rest matters. Boundaries matter. Sleep matters. So does food. So does friendship. So does the strange medicinal value of laughing until you cannot breathe.

The self matters.

But the self is a terrible god.

When the self becomes the highest good, it starts making moral claims it has not earned. It tells us that discomfort is danger. It tells us that obligation is oppression. It tells us that anyone who asks something of us is failing to respect our healing.

Sometimes that is true.

Sometimes people ask too much. Sometimes the boundary is necessary. Sometimes the healthiest sentence in the world is: no.

But sometimes the self is simply frightened, flattered, tired, vain, avoidant, or wrong.

That is why a life cannot be built around the self alone. The self is too unstable to be the moral centre of everything. It needs to be held in relationship with purpose and duty: with the world beyond us and the people near us.

Self-care should protect the self as the instrument through which we love, work, serve, build, repair, mother, think, create, and live.

It should not enthrone the self as the point of the whole exercise.

The question is not only, “What do I need?”

Sometimes the question is, “What am I needed for?”

Those questions belong together. Separate them, and self-care can curdle into something much less humane: a life in which every demand is an injury and every responsibility is treated as an attack.

Protect the self.

Just do not worship it.

Emily Hunt-Adiletta OBE is a bestselling author and keynote speaker.

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