To the flaws that complete us.

I did not realise how hard I had been on myself until I met a soul which was as broken as mine. Comparing your life and its issues to somebody else’s is definitely not the ideal way of coming up with solutions, but what I realised while talking to her is that loving yourself is much more important than anything else.

We are always busy trying to build this perfect life which we have seen everyone else live. It did not take much time for me to understand that it is just a form of perspective which we have formed to let ourselves know that they are happy and we need to be happy too. We constantly neglect the thought that there is something known as flaw which is not something that disturbs our perfect life but it is something that completes us and helps us for that perfect life. And yet again, who decides and defines perfection for us? And since when was it wrong to live a life which had flaws?

Since last more than just a couple of months I have been feeling like there is something wrong with my life and there is nothing that I can do to change it, just because I am a flawed person. Followed up with how my flaws are much worse than those of the people I know. In the last couple of months, I went under a shell which not only let me disconnected from most part of the world but also made me build a fence defining self-doubt, uncertainty, followed by insecurity thus separating me from the rest of the world that I was living in. I was somehow convinced that there is something majorly wrong with me and I was ready to blame it on others. That is exactly when self-realisation took place and the fact that I had let somebody else take over my thoughts, that “someone” who may or may not be living the ideal life now had the rights to tell me that the way I live my life is not right, it’s not perfect. The worst part was that I let it affect me. Sometimes the words were spoken and most of the time it was mainly actions that pointed out the flaws I had.

For some might define their flaw as anger, for others it might be their body weight, and for the rest it might be their insecurity of walking out of the house without any make up on, and for a lot it might as well the way look at life. One thing that I have learnt is that flaws come in all shapes and sizes. But it does not mean that flaws defining us is a bad thing. If you at your best is what defines you, why can’t you at your worst; here your flaws, define you too? Why do we have this perspective of identifying people with only their best and the moment their flaws start to shine we set them aside tagging that this is all that they are? Why do we have to make flaws define anyone in such an unsettling and disturbing way?

Your anger is not a bad thing, it does not matter if you are underweight or overweighed, you are all natural without make up and it’s okay to step out without that foundation on, and it’s okay if you have a perspective towards life which makes you happy. What matters at the end of the day is if you are satisfied. Just like how we know that one cannot have a life without tears, that is exactly how one cannot have a life without flaws and its okay for to let your flaws define you and complete you. A tiger does not feel bad about its stripes because the lion does not have it, right?

Who said that flaws are ugly and that these flaws are wrong? Why do we have to go through this process of hating ourselves because of the way we are. When we are broken, there is nothing that we can do except for the same... to hate ourselves.

In this world of competition where we are constantly fighting about how to be as good as others, we get a lot more into depth of how we feel others have to accept us instead of realising how much more important it is for us to love ourselves. I have been constantly asked to change since my teen years and to be honest, it sucks. I do not constantly want to hear how I have flaws and how it is bad to have them. Believe it or not, it took me almost a decade to realise that I have flaws, go into deep thoughts about hating myself because I was not "perfect" and then coming back here to accepting myself the way I am. Yes, I love to hear how I have changed, and yes, I appreciate it but that does not mean that these flaws were something that held me back; these flaws are necessary when we are growing up. In fact, these flaws are what have defined me and are going to help me grow up. Embracing my flaws and knowing them in depth is what raised me higher from where I was “stuck”.

We define our own perfection just like how flaws define us and complete us. To love ourselves is as important as that oxygen which we breathe, and hating ourselves over what people think of us is as unnecessary as it sounds.

“Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you”

-         George R.R Martin

- Priya Mistry

11^th March, 2017