Nobody is Perfect

photo credit Unsplash

Nobody is perfect, yet we pretend that everyone should be. We understand our own troubles and problems, so when we make a mistake, or our behaviour isn’t perfectly reasonable, we can easily attribute our subpar conduct to whatever underlying background issues we are currently experiencing. I didn’t get enough sleep last night, that’s why I was more irritable this morning. Or I have a big project due at work, so I snapped at my children who just wanted to play. We may not like our behaviour in these moments, but we are very understanding as to why we behaved the way we did. This compassion, we typically are able to find for ourselves, but rarely do we extend it to others. I had to drop my kids at school this morning and I spilled my coffee on my shirt and had to change, but I still managed to get to work on-time, why is my co-worker late? She should really learn to set her alarm earlier. Or I work 40 hours a week and earn everything I have, why should my tax dollars go to those lazy homeless people who can’t bother to get a job. 

We need to remember that there is context for everyone’s situation, even if we are not aware of that context. Yes, sometimes there are unscrupulous people who take advantage of the system, but most of the time people are doing the best they can with what they have been given, just like all of us. And these people, just like all of us, make mistakes. They are not perfect. But neither are we. The idea is not to expect perfection from anyone, it is to provide compassion and understanding, just as we would want for ourselves. And when someone inevitably makes a mistake, the goal should be to help them learn from it, not to shame them or abandon them.

This idea that nobody is perfect, can be expanded beyond our own personal daily struggles, to also examine history and society in general. Our world has been shaped by many great as well as by many tragic events. Having a thorough understanding of all of our history, can lead us to to achieve a much happier, united future, because we can address and learn from the problems while enhancing the achievements.

My reasoning for this specific blog came from a news article regarding the controversy in teaching young students a more diverse U.S. history. There seems to be a fear that if we point out the mistakes in our history, this would diminish our shared American pride. And I believe this stems from the idea that everyone must be perfect. We can’t examine any flaws because it would disintegrate all of the good as well. But this reasoning makes little sense to me. The history of this country has always been one of a nation striving to do and be better. It is the knowledge that we aren’t perfect, coupled with the desire to be, that has always made America great. Remember the Articles of Confederation was the first attempt at establishing the US government, but instead of forcing it to work when it was clearly too flawed, the founders came back and wrote the Constitution. Not only that, but they put in place the ability to amend it because they understood that this new document may need adjustments too. They did not expect perfection. Instead they learned from their mistakes and created a better document, one that survives to this day. 

There is this desire to substitute modern ideals for the realities of the past. Slavery was wrong. It was always morally wrong. Unfortunately, many people didn’t believe it was wrong when our nation was founded and the practice was intertwined within our founding history. This history will not disappear because it offends our modern sensibilities, nor should it. Instead it should be be taught and rightly abhorred. We can only learn from our mistakes, by actually learning about them. However, learning about the mistakes doesn’t mean we should not learn about the good as well. We can denounce the founding fathers who hypocritically declared “all men equal” while also owning slaves, while also revering the founding fathers for their radical ideas such as “all men are created equal.” We can view the founding fathers as regular people, as capable at making mistakes as anyone else. Should their mistakes overshadow the good they did? I don’t think so. Should the good they did overshadow their mistakes. I don’t think that either. Instead I think both should be taught. People are complex beings, capable of complex thoughts. We can understand what the founders were trying to accomplish, while also understanding that they weren’t perfect and did some truly horrible things as well. Understanding our entire history, will only help to make our future better. 

The ability to teach the good with the bad is what leads us to a better, brighter future because we can learn from our mistakes. If we learn from them, then we will be less likely to repeat them. It also reminds us that nobody is perfect. We must realize that everyone makes mistakes. Once we understand this, then we can exhibit compassion for those that want to learn from their mistakes and do better, just as we would want compassion shown to us. Showing compassion does not mean we ignore the mistakes, on the contrary, we learn about them and then we do better. Learning about the flaws in our history should not diminish our pride, instead it shows us that we are striving to be better people by learning about and fixing those flaws. Nobody is perfect, but only those that learn from their mistakes will get closer.