The familiar instruction on an aeroplane to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others is a sensible reminder that we are finite, and that our wellbeing underpins everything we are able to give beyond ourselves. But what the popular self-love and self-care movements miss is something essential: yes, we cannot pour from an empty cup, but sometimes it is in serving others that our cup is actually refilled.
Of course, there is a healthy form of self-love, one rooted in gratitude for God’s gift of life, in stewardship of our bodies and minds, and in recognising our own dignity. But the Church teaches that we should care for ourselves so that we can care for others. Loving oneself is not inherently selfish, but becomes so when it isolates us from communion with, and duty to, our neighbours. The modern narrative of self-love has been uprooted from its Christian soil and replanted in radical autonomy and self-centredness.
The result is a culture that prizes feeling good while quietly neglecting the goodness found in self-gift and service to others. And yet personal experience tells a different story. When our responsibilities grow, so too does our capacity. If you want something done, ask a busy person, ask a mother.
It can feel as though modern society presents only extremes: total self-reliance or statism. Catholic social teaching offers a profound middle way between rugged individualism and overreliance on the state, emphasising personal responsibility, active citizenship, and communal charity, where we become responsible citizens by investing in our families and communities.
Pope John Paul II encouraged laypeople to engage in public life, “forgetting their own convenience and material interests”, because when we become a nation focused only on looking after ourselves, we begin to see shifts in real, measurable ways.
According to the Community Life Survey, the proportion of adults in England engaging in formal volunteering at least once a month has dropped from 27 per cent in 2014 to just 17 per cent in 2025, and overall rates of both formal and informal volunteering are now at their lowest since such data began to be collected.
That decline is driven by many factors, including the disruption caused by the pandemic, perceived time poverty, and the way modern work blurs the boundaries between home and professional life. Yet it also reflects a deeper cultural shift: serving others voluntarily is increasingly reframed as optional rather than essential. When the first priority becomes comfort, avoidance of inconvenience, and emotional self-preservation, acts of charity lose their perceived urgency, importance, and relevance in daily life.
Studies suggest that narcissistic traits have increased among younger generations over recent decades, a pattern some psychologists link to broader cultural changes in self-focus and social media-style self-presentation. This, alongside the rise of anxiety and loneliness among Gen Z, suggests something significant: our deepest flourishing always involves others.
We must replace self-absorption with self-donation. Christ’s commandment to us, after all, was not simply to love ourselves, but to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). Self-care, rightly understood, becomes a means to serve, not an excuse to withdraw.
The rise of self-love culture is not entirely misplaced; it points to a legitimate hunger for care, dignity, and mental wellbeing. But when that hunger is fed solely by introspection and individual comfort, it misses the fullness of what the human heart truly needs. The love we learn to give away, to our children, our friends, and the stranger at the door, is the love that enriches us more deeply than solitude and comfort ever can.
Perhaps the challenge of our age is to recover the wisdom that loving oneself and giving oneself away are not diametrically opposed, but rather linked in the journey towards holiness. In the cry of a hungry child, in a volunteer’s gentle encouragement, in a neighbour’s shared morning coffee, we find a deeper joy than any self-centred self-help manual can offer: the joy of self-gift, the love that builds communities, families, and ultimately a more human and humane society.
-d.jpg)
