One of the hardest things that I find myself trying to do is practicing tolerance. Accepting the fact that others around me will never be able to be exactly like me, or the way I want them to be. It can be extremely frustrating when ideas or opinions don’t align, it can make us dislike or experience negative thoughts towards a person or situation. Even if we don’t realize it, they exist.
There was a point in my life where I found myself going through this continuous process of avoiding or eliminating people in my life that I thought had the worst defects. As soon as I found something as minimal as it was, whether it be an opinion, action or characteristic in a person that I didn’t like, it immediately became the ultimate excuse not to hang out with them. It was as if that defect was written across their face and it was all I could see and everything else that person had to offer was not worth knowing about. I lost a lot of opportunities on getting to know people deeply just because I couldn’t seem to tolerate them. Tolerating those defects and how a person could be different than me was difficult because it meant putting myself in an uncomfortable position, but that is the thing about tolerance, it means putting yourself in this situation only to get to a personal understanding between yourself and that other person. It’s really hard to find a positive aspect in someone when you let their defect take over your whole definition of them as a person.
Tolerance is most definitely something we should all practice more to create stronger relationships and a better community as a whole. The truth is you can’t change the way someone is, although you can either tolerate them or help them improve what you don’t like about them is hurting people around us.