flaws

We've all got them. Sometimes I wonder how aware of them we are.

They make us undeniably, unmistakably, unbearably human sometimes. So we try to hide them. Occasionally we succeed. Inevitably we fail.

They are physical, psychological, emotional, total, and tragic. But they are also what is most special about each of us. Our flaws confound us and they confound the ones we love. They challenge us to overcome them, and they tempt our friends and families to abandon us.

But we need our flaws because they force us to become more than just what we arrived with.

When I was young things were easy. I was charming, bright, different. I knew things, was wise beyond my years, I was told. Maybe it was true. Probably it wasn't. Nevertheless, I came by success easily. I grew accustomed to it. As a result, failure is now the bitterest of pills I can choke down. But, Nietzsche tells me, whatever does not kill me makes me stronger (he went crazy and died 2 years after writing those words, just fyi). Since "growing up" I've had to rely less on my charisma and more on my intellect to get me through. It ain't easy because I'm really not smarter than anyone else. I find that now I often resent the poor lessons of my wooly infancy.

I've had some time to think since then though and it occurs to me that our lives aren't lessons or tests or even gifts. They aren't to be squandered on what we wish they could be or should have been or were meant to be. In Leviathan, Hobbes writes that human existence is "brutish, nasty, and short." And so it is, on an individual scale. On a flawed, lonely, bereft-of-all-meaning measurement.

What's one life? It has value, to be sure, but not so much as two lives, for what should be obvious reasons. We're more than the sum of our parts, and the more parts the greater the sum.

Our communities are flawed too, but within those communities are the salves to mend our flaws. My flaws and your flaws and his and her flaws are inconsequential when we bandy together to accomplish the things we cannot do alone. And I tell you: we can do nothing alone. So, I tell you this:

We're all in this together.