Philautia - self-love
It was strange, extremely strange, how things ended up working. Very rarely did things happen the way you expected them to. Or even wanted them to. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it was just that you weren't prepared. Weren't prepared for things to work out as well as they did. Especially when it shouldn't work at all in the first place.
Tony didn't expect to find a team that would stand beside him, that would do more than simply put up with him and his antics. That genuinely liked him.
McGee still couldn't believe that he fit in in a team like this. He had a spot. It was his. And he was useful. He did good work. And people like being around him. Didn't want him to change. How strange.
Ziva would sometimes look around at everyone a shake her head, wondering how she became so close to these people. Closeness was a weakness was something that had been drummed into her. But it wasn't. Was it?
Of all the lessons that you could learn on a team like this, well, this was the most important one, in a way. Because they built each other up and supported each other in the areas that the other needed it. You were close to people. Depended on them. They depended on you. And when you had to be, had to do things like that, well, it was a lesson well learnt.
It was Love of self. Self-respect. Pride in yourself. Confidence. Actual happiness. Whatever you wanted to call it, they all boiled down to the same thing, more or less. That need to believe in yourself.
You would think that for a team of highly trained, very good at their jobs, confident people that they would have all of that. Of course, they would. Obviously, they did.
Except they didn't. None of them did. Well, they had confidence. Buckets of it. Maybe too much of it sometimes. Tony's flirting and bragging. McGee's trust in technology. Ziva's ability to fight. In their abilities they had confidence, not in themselves. They trusted what they could do but they didn't trust themselves. Didn't trust who they were. Because they had learned that people didn't like who they were. Or they didn't trust people with who they were. Because they had all had their trust broken at some point. Almost irreparably in some cases. And that was hard to heal from. Hard to move on from. And none of them wanted to experience that again so they protected themselves. Built walls. Put on masks. Became a character. Whatever worked for them.
There was Tony who lived to exist behind a mask. A smiling face. So many jokes and film quotes. A falseness. A shallowness. Trying to give the idea that that's all there was too him and nothing more. There was no need to look deeper. No need to peel back the surface. He didn't want people to even try those things, did he? He would just end up getting hurt. No. It was better to hide. To pretend. He was good at pretending.
Except, of course there was more too him. There was a lot more to him. He knew that. He always knew that. He just didn't want anyone else to know that. No one else needed to know that. Because that would make him too open. Too vulnerable. And one thing Tony didn't like was being vulnerable. In fact, he was scared of being vulnerable. Because he felt like there was no one he could be like that around. Except now he did.
McGee and his earnestness, his eagerness to please. His enthusiasm for technology that still got him into trouble every now and then. He just wanted someone to notice him. To be proud of what he could do without wanting to change him into something else. To prove himself. Which he had done. Several times over. But it hadn't been enough. He kept trying and trying and trying. Pushing and pushing and pushing to the point where he had to be pushed back. Reassured that yes, he was safe. Yes, he was just fine the way he was.
Abby's incessant positivity. Her odd outlook of the world that really wasn't that weird if you thought about it.
But she could a bit too much. Too loud. Too pushy. Too attention-seeking. Too odd. Not what you expect. And people didn't tend to like the unexpected. Didn't like people who didn't follow the status quo. And Abby certainly didn't do that.
She wanted people to be happy. To fond joy on things like she did. The positivity that she pushed and pushed because she was scared of anything negative. Scared that she couldn't handle it. Except that she could. And come out stronger for it.
And then Ziva who was all sorts of things all mixed up that she literally had to unravel herself to realise what parts of her were her. Truly her. And doing that took an awful lot of strength. And bravery. And a good dose of fear as well. Especially when she was so used to pushing things down and compartmentalising and just getting things done no matter what. To take a step back and tease all of that apart, well, not many people could do it.
And sure, maybe the rough bits, the dangerous bits, the downright terrifying bits were her. She had come to terms with that a long time ago. She had had to or else she wouldn't be able to do her job. She wouldn't be her without those bits. She wouldn't be here without those bits. And, strangely, it was those parts of her that were easiest to accept.
It was the parts of her that were protected by the harsher, stronger bits that were more difficult for her. The softness. The gentleness. The love for things like music and books and teas and languages. They were delicate spots. So, she should not have them. But she did and she was learning how to let them show.
Yes, loving yourself, believing in yourself was hard when all life seemed to do was throw hardship after hardship at you. When injustice seemed to top the scale more than justice did. When it felt like you were broken and beyond repair. Each of them on the team felt like that.
