

Learning to love yourself ,It is the greatest love of all", this is part of the lyrics in one of the popular song of Whitney Houston;"The Greatest Love of All". I used to sing this song when I was young and it was my favorite song. This is a very simple sentence, but if you are going to reflect, there is deeper meaning behind it. I gave value to this part of the song when my English teacher quoted this during our class. It really struck me and I began to reflect. It made me realized that how important it is to take care of one self. We Filipinos, we are used to being a martyr when it comes to family, OFW's work too much just for the sake of the family,family,family. Family always comes first, even though they forget to treat themselves. They punish themselves from working in order to get more money just to send to family. They even get sick from working with no time to unwind and get rid of the stresses in life. Sometimes we think too much for others and forget our own selves, thinking that we must care for them. You feel that you have to do everything just for them, and be willing to sacrifice. It is a great quality, but it's unfair to yourself. The result is, your family will depend on you for the rest of their lives. It's an act of tolerating their laziness. For me, before loving your family,friends,relatives, you must love yourself first. It is not narcissism but we must do it. In other words, you punished yourself from working too hard because you are doing it for your family. Then u get sick because you don't have the time to relax.The body is not like a machine, it needs to rest also. Think about that if you got sick and your family is always depending on you? How could they stand on their own feet? Let me explain what i'm trying to convey: If you don"t love yourself, you don't love your family as well. I just want to correct the mentality, that if you love your family so much that you have to work incessantly, you often forget or deprive yourself of the time to enjoy,relax and unwind.