The Importance of Self-Love by Jana

The Importance of Self-Love by Jana - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

The sankofa bird flies forward while facing backward. Sankofa means return and get it. Go back for whatever you left in your past, whether it be your security in yourself, your self-love, your history, or even something as minute as money. Return and get it.
The basic job description of a teacher today is to give the children a lesson, test them on it to make sure they understand, and if they pass the class, send them on to the next grade. The system repeats itself over and over again until the student has completed school. However, teachers that do this job aren’t really teaching. According to Anatole France, “The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” I have not had many teachers that fulfilled this description, but the one I specifically remember changed my whole life.
I was in middle school at the time; I was very insecure, shy, and had recently lost my grandfather. I was able to keep my grades up, but other than that I had completely let myself go. There was a dark cloud hanging over my head. One day in my history class, we were having a class discussion and something that my teacher said really struck out to me. “Love yourself.” I found it a little amusing because we were not discussing self love, but I was 13 years old and I didn’t really understand at first. Nonetheless, as I went home and thought about it, I learned that I really did not love myself.
The talks I had with my teacher started to become more frequent and private. Some of the self-love tactics I learned from her still help me to this day. Loving yourself encompasses the strength of being able to look at myself in the mirror and point out both my imperfections and strengths and having enough security in myself to know that I am different and different is beautiful.
Also in that class is where I began to learn my roots and where I come from. We had to do a family history project which taught me so much that I was not aware of. This too, she said, was an important part of loving yourself. Self-love is an important step on the road to success; you have to love yourself to accept your failures and your successes. My teacher helped to show me that it is extremely important to love yourself for a plethora of reasons, however, the main one was: If you don’t love yourself, how can you love anyone else?