So I’ve been questioning many things about my kind lately and by my kind I mean human beings. I question our acceptance and disapproval sex and nudity, infidelity, ‘bad’ parenting, poverty, wealth, stupidity, betrayal, superficiality…
smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts, the narcissist, the religious, the atheist, the meek, the vain, the modest [the good and bad] to sum it all up. While some things are clearly either wrong or right, there are many other actions and attitudes which deserve more scrutiny and understanding because there’s more grey area than there will ever be black or white especially when it comes all of us emotional creatures.
Being a hard-ass for most of my life has been my coping mechanism thanks to an unpleasant past. I learned how to put people and encounters into two boxes only: good or bad. This mindset kept life simple for me. The faster I could define it, the faster I could move on. I was so happy in my black and white world for all of two seconds, till I realised that I’d got it all wrong. Everything is not black or white. We are not just good or bad, we are more often than not confused, conflicted angry or afraid, and this is why we FUCK UP.
Remember that time you said terrible things to your sibling? Or the day turned into the hulk with your kids or the night you cheated on your partner with that friend? Was that because you made a conscious decision to be a “bad” person or were you perhaps just hurt, exhausted, lonely or confused at the time? I’m guessing the latter.
In an ideal world, we would ALL be able to pause and count to ten (yeah right!). In a world full of robots, we could all turn the “do the right thing” button on and maintain heavenly peace in our lives at all times. But we’re not robots and we don’t live in an ideal world because in an ideal world we would have grown up with the best of everything. We would’ve died with not a single regret. But the world we live in consists of emotional, mental and sexual abuse, poverty, infidelity, cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, fraud, blackmail, murder, torture, accidents, death etc. From the day we were born, we were born to be flawed.
Why then do we expect perfection from ourselves and others? Wanting to be the best version of ourselves is NOT trying to be perfect. You and I are different and we will stay different till the day we die no matter how much we have in common. Our genetic makeup alone places a huge part in our lives. All behavior is the joint product of heredity and environment, but differences in behavior can be apportioned between hereditary and environment. It is generally believed that human behavior is determined by complex interactions of both nature and nurture.
So before you berate yourself for the millionth time, all you need to do is say to yourself, ‘I AM HUMAN’. Remind yourself that while you should be doing everything in your means to walk a straight path, you will find yourself lost every now and then and that’s the beauty of life. Embrace your humanness, flaws and all. Take one day at a time. Breathe and let go. You can’t control everything but you can control how patient and kind you are to yourself. The more you accept your unique flawed self, the less you will struggle with trying to achieve perfection. You already are. Your imperfection is the ultimate perfection.
Sources:
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/biological-foundations-of-psychology-3/genetics-and-behavior-31/the-influence-of-genes-on-behavior-137-12672/
