Childhood and self-esteem

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Agatha Christie said: “One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.”

If we take “love” – love in any form: romantic, family and friendship – as a proof of our life existence, love is certainly the most important aspect of life, because only if we appreciate our existence in the first place, we are able to fulfilled it. The more love we receive, the more meaningful and joyful we feel our life is. That’s’ why we all desperately search for love.

Unfortunately, all love we received from others is not completely secure. We could lose our lovers, friends and family members. Or, even worse, we could try very hard but still could not get others’ love. However, one kind of love we could never lose – if we ever get it – is the love from ourselves: self-esteem. A person with a true self-esteem would feel the most confident, capable and emotional secure in his/her entire life, because self-esteem is unconditional, which means we do not have to worry about losing it.

However, self-esteem doesn’t come to us with life itself. Many people do not have it, or many people have to work very hard to get it. This difference, by psychological studies also my own observation, is mostly caused by our different childhood.

If all love we received from others are insecure, one type of love from others is different – the love from parents. The love from parents has the same nature as self-esteem – unconditional. So it is secure, so we don’t have to worry about losing it. Whoever have happy childhood, receive this kind of love from their parents (or whoever raise them), would learn self-esteem from the beginning of their life. And because whatever we learn from the beginning of life would have the most influence in our entire life, these people would naturally keep their self-esteem during their entire life. And on other hand, those who do not receive such kind love during their childhood would have many troubles to deal with self-esteem during their life. Some might eventually learned, some might not.

This is how Agatha Christie’s a few words told a universal truth of life.

Of course, there are still exeptions, because life is very complicated. Even those who have happy childhood might have to face challenge of their confidence under some specially circonstances, or, those who have unhappy childhood or even no childhood at all end up knowing the best about how to love themselves, but in general, a happy childhood is a solid foundation of our self-esteem – the most important element of our personal life happiness.