Body Count

Daily Meditation 769–4/6/2024

Self-esteem is a curious thing. It is entirely internally generated…
Yet we regularly use escapism and externalism to avoid the self-responsibility we have to ourselves in regard to esteem.

If one walks around all day in a great, tailored suit and receive a compliment on it every 3 minutes, they may feel temporarily elated…But if they genuinely have no self-worth and no purpose or meaning, then it doesn’t create an ounce of self-esteem. It’s just a hit of adrenaline in a dead heart.

You may argue, but let’s look at the relatively recent phenomenon of “body count” in terms of sexuality.

Perhaps it’s been for some years, but I can’t recall before approximately a year or two ago there being any real sense of “pride” (or something like it) associated to sleeping with many partners. Now, interestingly, there are a peppering of YouTube shorts (and probably TikToks) of generally young people essentially saying “Look at me — I’ve slept with 100+ people!” In fact, yesterday I saw one of someone confessing “I’ve been on vacation only a week but already have slept with nearly 25 people. My goal was 20.”

So we’re clear — this isn’t a message of judgement. People have their own free will and may live their lives how they wish so long as they are not harming someone else. (“Free…