Imperfection Binds Us Together

Video Transcript

Joe Primo: You began your book with a really provocative question. I would love to ask it of you and to see how you answer it for yourself. And that is, you know, what does it look like to truly love a neighbor, including those who don’t love you back?

Simran Jeet Singh: We all say we want to love our neighbors. We all say we should love our enemies. I mean, we all say fight love with hate and we all quote Dr. King and say, you know, only light can drive out darkness. I mean, we know these things, but they don’t become part of our character unless we practice them.

We often look for commonalities as ways to connect with people are different from us, right? Even people who might dislike us. But recently, I’ve actually found that the underside of human experience binds us together too.

Pain, suffering, loss, grief. I mean, this is part of what it means to be human as well. And we share that. And perhaps the most powerful for me, at least in this list of, you know, the underside, is imperfection. And the reason that that’s been such an important revelation for me is understanding that first of all, I’m not perfect. And if I’m not perfect and we agree that humanity is fallible, right? That is part of what makes us who we are. Then maybe we don’t need to hold each other to a standard of perfection all the time. Maybe when someone makes a mistake, or maybe if they do something we disagree with, or even if they do something that’s messed up and we want to hold them accountable…even then we don’t necessarily have to say that this is a horrible human being because they didn’t live up to this unachievable standard of perfection.

And so I found that to be a really helpful way of dealing with people who don’t like me, who dislike me, who hate me, and finding a way to see their humanity, even if they don’t see mine.