If You Can’t Love Yourself…

“If you can’t love yourself, how the heck are you gonna love somebody else?” — RuPaul

This iconic line closes every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s playful, it’s direct—and it’s also profoundly Buddhist. When asked what he meant by it, RuPaul said, “Simply put, you can’t give away something that you don’t have.” In other words, if we want to have compassion for others, we need to start with ourselves.