Sometimes, we’re told we need the perfect person to be our match: they should be confident, nice, a good listener, patient, and a whole host of other qualities you’re frankly unlikely to find in one single person but, rather, spread out among your other friends and family.
That’s why I’d like to champion an unlikely solution: Tolerating the imperfect and building up the good. This is not in defense of things like verbal abuse or physical abuse, which absolutely should not be tolerated at all!
What is imperfect? It’s falling asleep when you have a date night planned so you leave the lights off and make sure the covers are tucked in around them.
It’s being a little slow to react so you need to repeat yourself again so they can hear you.
The nuts and bolts of a relationship exist in the realm where the hardships are, when the tough gets going, when things are no longer smooth sailing. It’s when they cry for you or in fear for you and not because of you. That’s where the love is. That’s when we stretch forth our hand, bump it against theirs and find solidarity. Without it, you’ve got nothing or just a pretty house of cards that will tumble at the first knock.
I want to counsel every that reads this… tolerate the imperfect. Build up toward the good. People can change, but it takes a lot of time. Do you like and love them already? Because sometimes it’s not all forward motion: illness and depression can send someone reeling back to safer patterns and behaviors that served them as coping mechanisms in the past.
Don’t leave it sparse, grow a beautiful garden in your heart.
Continue to overlook the dull and the bland. In the end, cut somebody and we’re all a little plain and ordinary. Interesting comes in at the end, in reflection.
Life is built up of the basic and ordinary. Hell, cut me and I probably ooze pumpkin spice around the holiday season.
The next time you find yourself taking a deep breath to raise your voice… don’t. Let this one go. And the next, and the next. Remind yourself of all the good and tender things that already exist as food for your heart. If you love yourself and tolerate your own shortcomings, you’ll have plenty to spare for them too.
Don’t leave it sparse, grow a beautiful garden in your heart.
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