Radioactive

There is something beautiful about failure and people who able to admit that they've made a mistake. It's almost as though by opening themselves up to vulnerability and scrutiny, they allow others to do so as well.

I often feel like in our culture, we like to project the best images of ourselves, even with close friends and loved ones. Part of this, I believe, is due to the prevalence of social media and the effect of always being "on," or the feeling of being watched, labeled, even judged by others on a regular basis. We want to be seen as successful, happy, and loved. We want others to see the good things in our lives and usually only the good things.

But what is life without challenges? How do we grow as individuals if we don't allow ourselves to make mistakes and openly talk about them? If you think about the most defining moments of your life, the ones that really forced you to look at yourself and your life in a different way, I'm sure that many of those moments involved times of adversity, confusion, anger, and fear. Losing someone, not appreciating blessings before they're gone, failing to go after an opportunity, indulging too much in our own self-worth - these are the moments that really change us.

I have always believed that humanity is as capable of as much beauty as it is ugliness. Some interpret this to mean that I don't believe that humanity will ultimately do good, but that's not true. If I ever truly believed that, I don't think I would choose to stay alive. On the flip side, this means that for every terrible thing out there plaguing the world and its inhabitants (often caused by those very inhabitants themselves), there are also moments of tranquility, kindness and hope. These moments are fleeting, but they exist, and I think as long as humans are alive, they will continue to exist.

But in order for us to truly appreciate them for what they are, we must be willing to look at the darkness as well - and I mean really look at it, not just acknowledge that it's there and brush it aside for another day. It's not an easy thing to do; darkness has always been difficult to swallow, much less let free into the open. We don't always want to acknowledge mistakes, much less share them with people we care about (or don't care about). But failure is and always has been a core part of being human and only when we confront it in ourselves can we live, love and truly be whole.