by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: April 15, 2010

No one is perfect. We are all imperfect and it behooves any of us to believe otherwise. Only God is perfect. Therefore, to be human is to be a sinner and an imperfect creature. Were that not so, then what would be the need for education, religion, and incentives to do what we must do to better oursleves?

The truth is, we understand others through ourselves. It is only when we admit and accept our own shortcomings, that we can tolerate the same in others. It works like this: If we see someone doing what we once did, our first reaction is to hate them. Then realization takes hold that once we did the same thing, and it is this awareness that makes us love them in spite of the fact of their wrong doing.

We continue to despite the crime, in this case something small like dropping a cigarette butt on the street instead of putting it in a receptacle  specifically placed there for that purpose, or something large like doing harm to another human being.  Help toward our better understanding could be that we rationalize that we are older and she too will learn not to be careless in her disregard for her community. It also might inspire us to write an article on how to help clean up the streets, and how to stop hurting others.

We aren't perfect because we weren't born perfect. Something about our basic building blocks of life may have been deficient from birth. In other words, we could have inherited genes that predisposed to some types of illnesses, but we must accept this and move on. Even her our negatives have their positives. Knowing our bodily weaknesses will serve to keep us striving to overcome them by reinforcing our strengths.

There are all kinds of way of accepting our less than perfect selves: We can learn to believe that we were born imperfect so that we can strive to overcome our imperfections; we can make them into guidelines for helping others with like conditions; we can understand that were we not so afflicted, we would have been entirely different that what we have become, that precisely we are successful, happy, and well-rounded because of our lack of perfection, and not because of it.

Each person, of course, will have to deal with their own particular row to hoe. That is a old time saying that I often heard when I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. There were so many other sayings that expressed in their own way, ideas and concepts that they held dear. These people were farmers that eeked out a livelihood from the hillsides and small valleys that we lived in. Their talk were easily understood by each other. It only became quaint when outsiders were permitted to listen in.

Imperfections are only flaws if we permit them to be. When seen as opposites to the many good qualities, they become less imperfect and looked upon as a personal identification mark that separates us from others. Just as our good qualities are often those seen less often in others. Were we not also afflicted with some sort of flaw that we would have to show to the world, we might, in contrast, become so self-righteous we would be hard to live with.

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