Question: Are you in love with yourself?

Self love.

Everyone’s supposed to have it. If you don’t, you’re doomed to a life of misery and self-loathing.

Or so they say.

But I ask you, how much is too much?

There’s a little too much self love going on in some people’s heads, and the situation is getting out of hand. I know, I know, supposedly people who are full of themselves are simply masking gross insecurities. Frankly I’ll take the gross insecurities for $500, Alex. I mean, neurosis is much more attractive than arrogance.

Case in point: where my husband works, which is a large and bustling place, he has to THANK people for showing up to work. There is such a sense of entitlement going on in many of the people who work for or with him, that they believe that by showing up, they should get paid.

It’s the same principle as when my high school students expected to pass because they came to class.

Maybe it isn’t really self-love. Maybe it’s a sense of entitlement.

When people drive ahead of you dangerously because they are in a hurry, what they’re really saying is, “I’m more important than you and my needs supersede yours, slo-bo.” (or something to that effect) When people budge in line, they are essentially saying, “I am more important than you, so I should go first.” Honestly, didn’t these people go to freakin’ kindergarten?

So maybe I’m railing against entitlement, not self-love. But I do think self-love is over-rated. Self-like? Maybe. Self-acceptance? Probably. Self-respect? Definitely.

But the sense of being better or more important than other people, that’s just ugly. And that’s what arrogance is; and entitlement. It’s a feeling that you are truly superior to other people. Have a listen to Lily Allen’s new CD. She has a great song about it.