While Lorde’s vision of self-care is beautiful and powerful, our current distortion of it shoulders a serious risk. If seeking love for ourselves through gratification becomes the only form of love we engage in, then we will quickly lose all perspective and fall into the trap of superficiality and self-centeredness—just as I did with soccer. This is not to say that we don’t indulge in things that make us happy. Of course we do, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I love an evening of binge-watching TV and eating popcorn as much as anyone else. But when gratifying ourselves becomes our only
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