It Isn't Fair to Expect Perfection

We live in a world of imperfection, and certainly there are not perfect people. And one of the surest ways to break up a home, to break up a marriage, to break up a friendship, a business, or any relationship in life, is to overemphasize faultfinding. People in love overlook faults. In disillusionment they over emphasize faults. “Faults are thick,” said James Howell, “where love is thin.”¹ It isn’t fair to expect perfection in other people when we can’t give it ourselves. It is fair, however, to expect improvement, to expect repentance. It isn’t good enough to be just as good today as we were yesterday. Life is for learning. We ought to know more, to improve in our performance and be better each day. But in the meantime, one of the lessons of life is learning what to overlook⎯and when. There is a time for all things. There is a time when people can be corrected in kindness, and there are times of heat or anger or embarrassment when correction reacts the wrong way. And trying to ridicule people into improving their performance also often reacts the wrong way. Sarcasm is a sharp tool, but often cuts too deeply and leaves scars that are hard to heal. “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place,” said a thoughtful observer, “but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”² We shouldn’t reconcile ourselves into letting all imperfections persist, all faults go uncorrected. But we need to choose the time, the place, the manner, and the method in focusing on faults, remembering always that it is unreasonable to expect perfection of others when we cannot give it ourselves. In marriage, in the home, at work, in public life, and in all relationships, one fact we must keep uppermost in mind is that we are all of us imperfect people.

“Should you feel inclined to censure

Faults you may in others view,

Ask your own heart, ere you venture,

If that has not failings, too.”³