July 12, 2026- The vulnerability of being truly seen

It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.

~John Ruskin

True love doesn’t need pretense. It doesn’t need us to be inauthentic. True love doesn’t have to hide weaknesses or imperfections. True love doesn’t exist in spite of those things; true love includes them.

If we can’t bear the vulnerability of being truly seen – along with all our scars, we can’t bear true love. We will never quite open ourselves up to it. Our pride will prevent the truest love from having a chance.

We must teach ourselves that we are worthy of love, just as we are. If we can learn first to love ourselves unconditionally, it can become plausible that someone else could love us that way. Then, we can stop hiding the things about us that we might consider to be less lovable. We can take off our social masks, show up authentically and completely.

Once we have learned to love ourselves unconditionally, we might be open to the possibility of receiving that same kind of love from others. We can be free to expose our idiosyncrasies, to let our freak flags fly, to let ourselves truly be seen and heard for everything we are.

Or we can keep letting our pride get in the way.