#7. “I accept myself and others just the way we are knowing none of us has to be sick to get better” – Bill Whinnen
Over the summer I found a list of 21 aphorisms written by my late father. There’s no explanation, it isn’t addressed to anyone, it’s just hand written in pencil on yellow legal pad. He clearly wrote it for himself as a reminder of what his core beliefs were. Each is a gem of positivity that would be great in any kindergarten classroom; things like, “I’m a neat guy. I really like myself!” and “I love taking good care of myself and others.”
There is one aphorism that stands out for me and it is #7, “I accept myself and others just the way we are knowing none of us has to be sick to get better” That last part, the “none of us has to be sick to get better,” has stuck in my brain. I find myself mulling it over as I walk to work, as I am walking home. I think about it when I am trying to write, when I teach, when I am just doing meanial tasks.
I think I like it so much because it is a reminder that the very act of being alive is a thing worth pursuing. We don’t have to be “bad” at something to keep trying to do it. We can just do things. We can just be and still work on being.
And while this might seem perfectly obvious, I don’t think it is. Most of the time “getting better” is viewed from the lens of deficiencies. You failed to reach a goal, fix the thing, etc. This binary; imperfection is bad/perfection is good, assumes there is something inherently wrong with us, a “sickness” to be cured. It means being a human, living a human life is, by nature, flawed. We are damaged just because we are.
Seeing imperfection as negative is a trained response. It is learned. It is shame’s most successful tool. Through this lens, our imperfections make us unlovable. And the remedy for unlovability is conformity. Conformity depends on three things; believing a narrow set of attributes is “ideal,” striving to achieve these attributes, and always falling short of these attributes. No one is enough because this “ideal” doesn’t exist. It is a rigged game with goal posts that are always being moved.
And when we fall short (which is inevitable), we feel bad about ourselves. And when we feel bad about ourselves, we feel less lovable. And we all want to be loved so what do we do? We try harder to mold ourselves into these constraints hoping it will make us, if not lovable, then acceptable to others. Conformity demands resignation, it demands accepting “insufficiencies” as an identity and rejection of Love itself.
This is a kind of spiritual death. Conforming to a norm doesn’t make us lovable because we’re meant to be messy, curious, open. We are meant to love ourselves as we are; to celebrate and enjoy the meat sacks we’re in. When we believe we are inherently “sick” we cannot accept that we are loved just as we are. If the Perfect Is, then we Are. We cannot be anything else.
But that doesn’t mean we just accept whatever comes into our heads and say, “It’s perfect!” Believing in candy coated “loveliest” won’t serve us any more than believing we are broken. We are not blank slates. Loving ourselves means we take ownership and responsibility for ourselves, it means be active and discerning. My father wrote his aphorisms in pencil. They are thoughts, not commandments. Ideas are crossed out, erased, rewritten. He changed his mind. But that the initial thought, the one erased, left an impression. The first informs the next. We are meant to participate in this life. Being and doing is our birthright. Embracing imperfection as both our right and our opportunity.
So keep on keeping on because you do not need to be “sick” to get better.