From the time I was a little girl with awkwardly short pigtails and electric pink-rimmed glasses, my mother always spoke a truth to me that I wasn’t fully able to understand until I begin to mature. “People don’t come in perfect,” she’d say (and still does).
As I’ve grown and learned about life, myself and God, my mother’s words resonate with me more deeply than the year before. Once I embraced the fact that I would never be perfect but should, instead, strive to be whole—personally, spiritually and emotionally—life began to mean more to me. I began to enjoy it, not just exist in it, trying to gain everyone’s approval or live out others’ ideas of what would be perfect for me.
I can't be who you want me to be, ma'am and sir. I have enough problems walking in who I am intended to be. I'm still learning and trying to get it right, and from what I understand, I probably never will. (Disheartening? Maybe a little. But it's also liberating.) Of course, no one likes to make mistakes, and I'm certainly no different, but I've learned to accept graciousness from myself. I've learned that it's just as important to forgive yourself for transgressions as it is to ask it of the person you offended. I'm naive enough to believe that when you fall, if you want to keep walking, all you have to do is get back up. You maybe bruised, may even have a limp, but walking is walking, right?
I now live out loud, unapologetically. This manifests itself in the way I carry myself, dress and interact with others. I’m not perfect and never will be, and neither will the people around me. So I arm myself with compassion and keep in mind something my grandmother would say whenever she met someone who just didn’t get it: “Bless her heart.”
What lesson were you taught about life you now realize is a truism?
nac.
