AS IN "ME FIRST" and "gimme," the pronoun me has gotten a bad name over the years. It's other people we're told we should be thinking about. It's giving to them. But taken all by itself—just me—there's something rather poignant about it. Only two letters long. Barely one syllable. It looks as though it needs all the help it can get.
"Love your neighbor as yourself," we're told. Maybe before I can love my neighbor very effectively, I have to love me—not in the sense of a blind passion, but in the sense of looking after, of wishing well, of forgiving when necessary, of being my own friend.
-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
