My husband and daughters enjoy a little ritual when they manage to be together: They get their nails done. Manis, pedis, foot massages, whatever they want, and our daughters can fully relax because their dad pays the bill. I’m glad my husband does this with them because I am not a fan of manicures. Or pedicures. Or massages. Or really anything that involves a stranger touching me.

At least that is what I tell them when they set off for their appointments without me. But one of my daughters challenged my excuse, asking me: If I say I don’t like strangers touching me, why don’t I have a problem with more invasive physical interactions like medical exams? 

She made me think. Kids are good at that.

So little by little, I’ve been diving past my flippancy, and I’ve found myself submerged in lessons learned at my Catholic grade school. My thoughts reached back to the late 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council seemed to be changing things right and left. I remembered how some of the Dominican nuns who taught us were showing their hair and their calves in their updated habits and teaching us new songs like “We Shall Overcome.” But some of the more seasoned nuns were emphatically, devotedly old-school. While the young ones played guitars during Mass, the old ones stuck to their holy guns, impressing on us the importance of embracing self-sacrifice and avoiding the sin of selfishness. It seems they left a mark on me. 

Which is perhaps one reason why I am uncomfortable with society’s current emphasis on self-care. As political upheaval and social injustices and outright criminal behavior at high levels of our government engulf us, we are often advised to step aside and take care of ourselves. “Put on your own oxygen mask first,” the experts say. We should not feel bad if we tune out, if we take some time to focus inward, unplug, have a glass of wine, get the mani-pedi, ignore the news, eat some chocolate, read a novel, take a bath, go outside. And I agree with all that. But deep down: Do I?

Maybe I don’t. 

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy some self-indulgence. I like wine and novels. I am no hair-shirted ascetic when it comes to the good life. But at my core, I think I have wondered: Why do we put on our own oxygen mask first? Aren’t we supposed to help others? And isn’t that why we are here?

The further down I dig, the more I see that the kind of self-care that makes me uncomfortable is the kind that requires another human to wait on me. I know that manicurists and masseuses are paid professionals, but still. It feels to me like having a servant. I am fine with employing pet sitters or Lyft drivers or electricians, but these folks are helping me do something that I cannot do for myself at the moment. They are not waiting on me personally. On my body. 

Maybe deep down, I think caring for the physical body is unseemly. 

I think back to the old nuns and the way they taught us to revere the examples in church history of martyrs who died rather than deny their faith, the arrows sticking out of St. Sebastian, the gruesome breasts of St. Agatha on a platter and the ever-present reminder in every classroom of poor bloody Jesus nailed to the cross. It is as though they taught us that the holy way to treat one’s body was with contempt and dismissal. We learned that the body is a temple and all that, but the body was never to take precedence over the soul. The body was a useful shell until it became useless in its own weakness. 

I am amazed that all of this reflection has come from a simple question from my daughter: Why don’t I want to get a manicure? I’m prompted to notice how I am doing the thing I’ve seen old people do, which is to go mining in the past. As my mother aged, she increasingly dwelt on her high school days, excavating around them like an archaeologist of the psyche. On the final approach to my 70s, I am doing the same with my formative school years. I am turning them over in my mind, looking for answers to the question of why I am the way I am, finding reasons long dormant in my present thoughts. But I do not want to live in the past, even as I unearth it.

Perhaps cementing my aversion to self-care is my experience of motherhood, which has defined my most vigorous years. I have no regrets. But being a mother fits nicely with the denial of the self. It is a joyful kind of living martyrdom that now extends to my grandkids, for whom I would sacrifice everything without hesitation. Here is where I note that some of the biggest self-care advocates I know are childless. That sounds snotty, but I mean it as a way for me to consider and appreciate the importance of balance in caring for ourselves.

Because even Jesus believed in the necessity of self-care. “Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed,” Mark tells us (1:35). “In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God,” Luke mentions (6:12). There are other Gospel moments where Jesus practiced self-care. He crafted the balance between his work for others and his own personal stability with times of prayer rather than manicures, but he understood the need for rest and retreat. He allowed his friends to feed him and care for him and relax with him. In the background of his years of active ministry, there are instances of downtime. Maybe finding human balance is more complex and more nuanced than worrying about selfishness. Jesus might have enjoyed a massage.

My daughter may be disappointed that this old dog probably will not be learning the new trick of mani-pedis, but I am feeling enlightened about the wisdom of self-care. Or maybe this whole essay is a self-indulgent wallow, total cringe, as the kids used to say. But I think that each one of us is a whole, unique and treasured person, an intricate work of God’s art composed of body, mind and spirit, and we are going through a rough spot right now. We do not have all the answers to life’s questions, but we can remind ourselves to keep looking, keep searching, keep caring. We can also permit ourselves to step away, to go to the deserted places in our lives, to take a break. And yes, we do well to remember that the flow of oxygen in the masks is indeed meant for us.

Valerie Schultz is a freelance writer, a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and the author of Till the Moon Be No More: The Grit and Grace of Growing Older. She lives on the Oregon Coast.