On Falling in Love with my Weakness

Perfectionism has haunted my dreams since I was young.

Sometimes as a teenager, I would stay awake until three in the morning screaming for forgiveness for wrongs I committed, real or perceived.

I’ve learned from hard experience that that mindset is not sustainable. I’d have continued a perfectionist with all my heart and soul had it not nearly destroyed me.

Nevertheless, while I have learned not to beat myself up, I often begrudge myself my weaknesses.

I don’t allow myself to be weak. I don’t allow myself to go into the pain of failure. I don’t allow myself to make mistakes, or to face them. I don’t

But the thing is

The only true wisdom is the knowledge of our foolishness.

The scripture that was on my plaque before my mission was Ether 12:27: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men who will humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”

Mormon or not, this verse contains a universal principle applicable to all people. Our weakness, our foolishness are the entry points that light and renewal come into our lives.

How? My weaknesses enable growth. They enable growth by justifying it through need; why would I grow if I had no need to grow? And how could I experience joy, that elusive quality born of witnessing life in its fulness, if life was mere static perfection?

Also. My weaknesses teach me what truth is. What is weakness without a truth in comparison? How could I say I was weak, or strong, if there was not a body to display weakness or strength in the first place? And how could my body be weak, or strong, if there were not a gravity of truth against which to compare its performance? If I was always strong, why would I ever have need to think of my relation to truth? In always being strong, my body is one with truth by its own virtue, and I never have need to learn relationship to truth. In weakness, I gain knowledge of truth by its absence. In my body, and by its weakness, or more precisely by grappling with its weakness, I learn truth. I love by struggling to love. I hope by struggling to hope. I know gravity by struggling daily to rise against its pull.

I understand Paul’s statement, then: “When I am weak, then am I strong.” Living in the center of this paradox requires that we stare into the abyss, unsparing and unshuddering at the reality that we are fools, each one of us, unaware of what “is,” by nature unsympathetic in the sense that we, limited by our natures, cannot feel all that “is,” cannot know all that “is.” And then, even in the midst of staring into that abyss, we will feel that abyss stare right back into us: the reality that we humans contain a fire that can alight all the abyss into life. Call it our compassion, or our being children of God, or whatever language you call that fire;. It is, and just as the match can flame entire forests under the right conditions, so can we transform the abyss into threads of life shot through with the entire spectrum of color.

So thus I fall in love with my weakness. It is the center of my condition as human, the place where I wrench meaning out of life, squeezing it as the towel laden with gasoline mopped from the garage floor, and like fuel, use it to ascend.