The Beauty of Despite
We are, in spite of.
What does it mean to be brave, to be strong, to be confident, to be good?
What are good qualities without bad ones to contrast them?
It seems as if life is about collecting all these good qualities and putting them to use. We’re taught that we must be brave, that confidence is key, that we need to be good. However, as we all know, it isn’t always easy to be this way. It isn’t easy to attempt perfection.
Fortunately, it seems we don’t need to have these qualities from the get-go, because that’s just impossible. We can’t have all these positive characteristics from the beginning; it’s impossible to be intrinsically good, naturally brave, effortlessly perfect.
Fortunately, it seems there is hope of having all of these things even if we didn’t have them before.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” — James Neil Hollingworth
We are, in spite of
No one is born without fear, without insecurities, without weakness. It’s human nature. However, it is not the absence of these negative qualities that lets us have the positive ones. All the ugly is definitely there for all of us, and no one can see that better than ourselves. It is not the absence of fear that gives us courage; it’s moving past that fear despite its presence.
It’s the same with all good qualities, if you think about it. It’s impossible to be confident all the time, but it’s about doing things anyway in spite of the presence of insecurity. We can’t always be strong, but strength is pushing through in spite of the presence of weakness. Most of all, we can’t always be good, but choosing to do good things is what it means to be good despite the temptation to be bad.
Beauty comes from choice
This is where the real beauty of the concept comes in; the choice.
True good is choosing to be so. It may seem like other people have it easy, that it’s effortless for them to have all of these positive qualities, but this isn’t always the case. We have to be deliberate about the things we do because that’s what gives us the perseverance to see it through, and that’s where choice comes in.
Choosing to do something makes it that much more doable, because what else could be the first step to achieving something big?
There is hope
I realise now that we earn these qualities — that we have to fight to have them, that we have to choose to have them. Doesn’t that make small victories a little more fulfilling, and therefore cause to celebrate?
If there is any one takeaway I want you to have from reading this, it’s that there is hope for all of us. It’s okay to not be all kinds of things from the start — brave, strong, confident, good. It’s even okay to not have them right now. That’s because now, we realise that it’s something we can work towards, not something people inherently have that we don’t. We can’t go on thinking that having weaknesses means we’ll never be strong; there is hope for all of us because we can work towards the good despite the presence of the bad.
We are, in spite of. We persevere, despite.
Isn’t that beautiful?
