Being Loved Means Being Seen

“Everyone wishes to be loved,” James Baldwin wrote, “but in the event, nearly no one can bear it.” We all long for deep connection and adoration, yet we often want to be admired only through our masks. And when those masks slip, we can act brutally: lashing out, hiding, or hurting those we claim to love — anything to avoid being seen.

Baldwin saw this terror of being loved as the root of racism. The white man hates the Black man, the Westerner the immigrant, because in this Other he sees parts of himself he cannot yet hold with compassion. Confronting racism, then, is not a way of “dividing us”, as some say. It’s a way we all can learn to love ourselves more fully.

Meditation, too, is a practice of learning to see and love ourselves more fully. That’s why it’s both so healing and so hard. Years ago, a woman said to me, “I don’t like meditating because it makes me feel lonely.” But meditation doesn’t *make* you feel anything. The loneliness was always there. Meditation just makes you aware.

This is self-love, despite what our corrupt wellness industry says. No, self-love is not about pampering yourself, insisting you’re always right, cutting off anyone who challenges you, or clinging to routines that promise a false sense of control over your life. These, actually, are forms of self-avoidance.

True self-love is mindfulness. It’s putting aside the stories and dramas (which are ways of abandoning yourself) and simply being with who you are: a body that is fragile, a mind that is highly reactive, a heart that often contains anger, sadness, jealousy, and other emotions that may threaten your self-image.

But you are not JUST these things. And if you can pass through the fire of witnessing it all with love, you will also find ease, pleasure, goodness, and an awareness that can hold everything without being overwhelmed. This is the true mirror of your magnificence, the only self-love worthy of its name.

Sculpture by Park Ki Pyung