How many of us struggle with accepting our faults? I know I do, and I have a hunch that this station isn’t just particular to me but rather is just an unfortunate facet of being human.
I think we are all well aware of what our faults are. I could spend quite a bit of time cataloging all of mine right here, but that’s not quite the point.
The problem I have always struggled with is believing that I have a right to have those imperfections. I understand the truism that nobody is perfect. We’ve all heard that practically since the moment we were born. And yet so many of us seem intent on proving it wrong.
I see the faults in people I love and I accept them. Sometimes they annoy me; sometimes they don’t. But regardless, I accept them as part of who these people are. And I love them. I don’t define them by their weaknesses. I don’t dwell on them and focus exclusively on them. They are just a part of a much greater whole.
And then I see the faults in myself and they cause me to crumble. I collapse under the weight of them. And it doesn’t matter how serious or deeply ingrained the fault — I treat them all as pretty much catastrophic. And as soon as I see them, I start to tell myself that I need to change them. I’m not good enough to be allowed imperfections. I haven’t earned the right to falter. Other people can have them, but I can’t. I will never be good enough as long as it is there. And I get set on annihilating it instantly, almost manically. Either that, or I spend days on the couch barely able to lift my head up against the weight of my imperfections. Neither response is either appropriate or helpful, and neither has really ever led to a change in the fault.
But then the egoism of the whole process became apparent to me. To say that I wasn’t allowed these faults, to say that I needed to overcome them ALL was to say that I was above human nature. Everyone has faults, but not me. I can’t.
And so I was stuck. I didn’t feel like I was good enough to be allowed to have faults, but I was being egotistic to have this belief. A bit confusing? Yea, to me too.
And it brought me back to a question someone asked me a few years ago: upon what do you base your self worth? And that’s an incredibly difficult question to answer. I think too often, too many of us base our worth on our actions. The problem with that is that our self worth will always be on a seesaw because our actions are inconsistent.
All of this came to mind because I had been having an extremely good week. I felt like the weight of the last few months was finally completely lifted, and I felt capable again. I was moving forward. I was having fun with the girls. Things were good, and I was on cloud nine.
And then someone said something to me that brought me face to face with one of my weaknesses. And I crumbled. I spent the afternoon in a fog barely able to keep the tears from my eyes. In fact, at one point I succumbed to the tears and the overwhelming sense of shame that came with the conversation from today.
And I got very angry at myself. Why do I allow my sense of self worth to be dictated by what someone else sees — by what someone else judges as my weakness?
And then the answer started to become a bit clear to me. It’s not just a matter of caring too much what others think (although this is surely a problem.) Rather it’s the issue of basing my sense of self worth off of my greatest weakness. If I have no weaknesses (or if I’m not paying attention to them,) then I can feel okay about myself. But if someone else points out a weakness or I amplify it in my own head, then my self worth starts to plummet.
And that’s the problem with basing our sense of self on our actions, habits, or really any specific aspect of personality or behavior. We are inconsistent.
And yet we teach our children that they are good enough regardless. In them, we see an inherent worth, warts, faults, and all. And yet we don’t do the same with ourselves.
I’m not really sure how much sense I’m making here because these ideas aren’t all that clear to me. I just want you to think about what you base your sense of self on. On what do you base your worth? And if you can’t answer that question (as I really can’t at this point,) then perhaps you’re on the same journey I am on. And that’s comforting. Perhaps one day we will all find our way there.