Tags
absolutes, asking the difficult questions, black or white, complexity, deep dive, divisive, good or bad, growth, identity, idiosyncrasy, impossible standards, kindness, mistakes, never say never, potential, rigidity, self acceptance, self awareness, self-criticism, self-loathing, understanding
I despise absolutes. They remove the human and the humane from whatever chunk of life they’re being applied to.
Not to say I no longer support striving to become the very best version of ourselves that we can be. But holding yourself to the impossible standard of perfection with the sort of rigidity and fierceness that should remain in the realm of zealotry is a sure road to failure, disillusionment and the deepest of pains. It will be the kind of pain that gushes out and stains your thoughts when your identity (or the identity you’d held of yourself) is threatened to collapse under the weight of those standards not being met (at least not on an ongoing basis).
Say ‘never‘ and you’ve already doomed yourself. Saying ‘I would never‘ is to be arrogant enough to dare promise on behalf of the Universe, to dismiss the countless permutations of conscious decisions combined with chance that might lead you to nonetheless once, just once, do or say the very thing you vowed you’d never.
Absolutes divide. It’s either black or white, never any shades of grey. It’s either good or bad, never imperfect yet ultimately worthy. It’s either yes or no, never justifiably conflicted yet willing to work on making the best decision. Absolutes take away they very life out of living by denying the inflections that each one of us brings to existence, the complexity of reasoning and emotional turmoil that are bound to unfold behind an apparently simple decision or an unflinching attitude.
To put it bluntly, absolutes fuck us up by splitting the mind and soul into either/or. Nothing else is gifted even a shred of worthiness or validity in this limiting worldview and that’s a punishing way to regard oneself when there are almost 7.8 billion of us breathing today, each with our own peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, our darkness and our light sides. Imperfect does not equal unseemly or unworthy, but rather full of potential to still grow