One of the beauties of growth, in my opinion, is the realizations. More than all the discoveries you make, there are the realization of different things. You realize things about yourself, you realize things about the people around you, you realize things about your environment. You basically realize things you never knew and that learning process in itself, especially when it’s one that didn’t cost you something vital, is beautiful to experience.
I don’t take this lightly because it requires you having to be in-tune with your emotions. Pausing. Listening. Paying attention. Being mindful. And with how fast-paced my life has been moving, I didn’t expect that I’d have this realization. So, it was rather an insightful experience where the one day I paused to breathe and think things through, I came to understand a few things.
It’s about imperfections.
There’s this thing I live by where I understand that it’s our imperfections that make us perfect. But even as we realize this imperfections in ourselves, maybe in our looks, posture, habits, we do not give the next person that leverage. We do not give them the understanding we give ourselves when we realize our imperfections.
I’ve always prided myself to be a person of principle. But there’s a path that gets to, and its nearly akin to hypocrisy. I heard this thing where someone said that we all have things we’re comfortable with and the ones we’re not. Sins we do and the ones we do not do. So, we commit the sins we’re comfortable with, and judge people for committing the sins we’re not comfortable with.
And it hit me deeply how true that is.
And how wrong it is as well.
A lot of things have happened in the last week that has made me realize my flaws in not giving people the liberty to also be imperfect. So, even though I don’t judge them for it, I kind of cut them loose before they get to apologize or acknowledge their mistakes. Paying attention and being mindful has made me understand that even when people don’t realize their flaws or mistakes, grace should be given to them because some part of their minds think their actions to be right.
Being mindful in the last week has taught me to be kind. And to be more forgiving, and to give grace where grace is due. I’ve gained people into my life the last couple of months, and I’ve also had to eliminate other people from my life. It has been a trying couple of months, trying to sieve through the weed to obtain what is right.
Yet, I found myself being unforgiving of others’ mistakes. And not giving them grace like I would give myself if I made those mistakes. But now I’m more enlightened, and now I understand that even though there are some lines that cannot be crossed, and even though I have my deal breakers, I should also learn to balance grace with it. Be more understanding of the fact that we are all humans and we make mistakes, so we should also allow people to learn from those theirs.
Tomorrow will be better. Because I’m learning, and realizing, and becoming a better person for it. It’s okay to be imperfect, but let’s remember that others are imperfect as well, and not judge them for the things about them we dislike, when there are things about us, others may dislike. Cheers to a better us. A perfectly imperfect us. Every day.
Images are mine.
