All/None are flawed
If you are asked to note down two flaws of your closest friend, I don’t think you’ll even stutter before blurting them out. “She’s always late” “He’s always complaining” “My friends rather won’t complete their office work than spend an extra hour on it”. If you are asked to note down two flaws about yourself, we might not say them out loud but surprisingly we know what those are. It could be, “I sleep less than what’s needed”, or, “I eat a lot outside”. But my question lingers in between; Flawed by who?
We are innately designed to look for flaws. It could be learnings from family, learnings from society or just ancestral DNA to should ourselves as superior the moment we meet a new person. Though we don’t accept it, we look for flaws all the time. We are fast to categorise how the other person is below us. This happens with media too. If you see an article headlined “Bill Gates donated a billion dollars to charity” you might think it as meh. But if you read “Bill Gates uses his donations not to pay taxes” we are quick to open the article and see how he’s much worse than we are.
Well, I don’t have any problem with an article, but with how we all perceive these flaws in general. First of all, what we DON’T LIKE becomes a FLAW. If you don’t like chicken, someone eating chicken becomes a flaw. As simple as that. We perceive ourselves to be the highest being among beings.
Broadly speaking, none of us think there’s any downside to it. On the contrary, it becomes an upside to bitch about them among your peers. But these “Radar for flaws” dripped into my daily life one drop at a time.
My cousin sleeps are 8pm. That’s a hard fact. Whatever the world hits him with, he doesn’t give a damn about it; he has to hit bed by eight. No joke, this pissed me off whenever we wanted to go out for dinner at nine — he was the first to say no. He might suggest that he’ll stay back this time. But I want it to be a night of all, not a night of all minus one cousin. But slowly I’ve tried accepting it as a fact rather than a flaw. If we need to go out, we just need to plan it such that we’re back by eight. It’s as simple as that. If we can’t make it before eight, then maybe we can postpone the plan to another day or it’s fine if we go by ourselves if my cousin says so.
As I started accepting them as facts, my life had become quite easy. “He won’t wake up early for sunrise? It’s fine. I can go by myself” “ She can’t eat non-veg on Saturdays? Well, we just have to plan the party on a non-Saturday”. Going with their flow to understand them better, rather than complaining that they aren’t in my flow, made sense.
Implementing this with new people was easy; It’s a lot harder with people I’ve travelled for years or decades. Again, it’s not impossible, it’s just hard. There are always ways to make, those who’ve travelled with me for better part of my life, happy; and accepting them as is, becomes the first step.