Transparency

Have you ever met a perfect person? The one who appears to not have any struggles? This is the one who never makes mistakes, one who has all the answers, one who is never transparent unless it involves OTHERS, in which case, the blame or downfall is placed on the OTHER party.

I remember falling into peer pressure as a pre-teen. My parents would tell me and my siblings, “No, you can’t go” or “No, don’t do this,” and most of the time without explanation. So, I developed the mindset of “they don’t understand, they just automatically say no.” This was because there was no reasoning or explanation offered, not saying they owed me one. But there was no relatability. In my mind, my parents never struggled with peer pressure or hormones. I would’ve felt better if my mom had said “I don’t want you talking to this crowd BECAUSE when i was your age, I was influenced by the wrong crowd and that lead me to make a bad decision, ” instead of “because I said so!” It would’ve shown me that my mom really knew how I felt and she could identify with my struggle.

As an adult, I’ve screwed up countless times. I thought I had failed at life when I found out that I suck at being perfect. Being the person that I am, I’ve learned that people don’t learn from your perfection…at least, I don’t. People don’t develop hope from hearing that you’ve never messed up. People develop hope from seeing your scars and hearing of you overcoming your fears and failures. People develop hope by seeing your bruises and seeing how you survived them. Give people hope not a superficial person that lives a superficial life that’s impossible to live. There’s nothing worse, as a struggling young adult, than looking up to someone as an example but they portray the role of a superhero. It places the standard of living in a place so high that it almost seems pointless to strive for it. Oh, how the road to redemption would seem so much more simple if we would be more transparent.

Let us see YOU!