Love your partner like you love yourself?

I realize that my timing for writing this is probably not preferable. I am sitting in class being lectured about "Body Image," oh, Intro to Wellness, and your Christian view of the world. Many of the things that are said are so unrealistic, and it's just sad. What struck me and inspired me to write this blog is when the lecturer stood up and said, "you must love your boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, or partner, like you love yourself."

I wish i could say that everything is as simple as that. Even some of the most confident people i have come to know in my life don't love themselves fully. How can that biblical reference be applied to a self conscious, anxious, depressed society? Messiah's ideas on community and culture just amaze me. According to Messiah when it comes to body image everyone is just supposed to put issues into the hands of God. That's all well and good, but what happens the minute when we step off Messiah's campus...that is the real world and people out there do not treat Messiah students differently. I really wish that people could step out into the real world and see it as a hard, mean, place; and that it is not going to be like the snow globe of Messiah.

I grew up in a bubble. My hometown is a nice area, full of nice people, where bad things really don't happen. However, I don't feel sheltered. I have seen things. I have experienced things. There are some students at messiah that literally have never experienced anything, and probably never will.

This little movement towards experiences just reminds me of something a judge told me. He said that the reason that the drinking age is not 18, but it is 21 is because no one has "life experiences" before they turn 21. So basically, he was trying to tell me that I have experienced nothing in my life, BUT the minute I turn 21 there will be an array of life experiences flowing into me making mature and old enough to take a drink? This was a crazy concept to me. I have life experiences, I have been through a lot in my life. He doesn't know that. I really feel like this judge went to messiah and grew up in a conservative christian household. If that was the case, then he probably never had any life experience. The first experience he had was when he graduated college and went into the REAL WORLD. All in all, Messiah shelters its students and doesn't allow us to make decisions, to make mistakes. We can not learn anything if we can't decide to make a mistake.



namaste.