It has been occurring to me in a wide variety of ways recently that one has to be able to accept a whole lot of what we think of as “imperfection” in order to keep the heart open. I loaned my friend some books by a certain author and told her that if she can overlook the terrible writing and just pay attention to the story, it can be delightful, page-turning reading. I notice myself thinking similar things while watching news and other shows. There are so many parts that can be hard to take – bad, tasteless, outrageous, unaware –  if I were to let myself get disturbed by them all I wouldn’t be able to enjoy much of anything.

So it is with life and with each other, I am thinking. It is easier to shut down, reject and criticize than to keep the heart open, to love and embrace the wholeness of a person or experience. The notions of “critical discernment” can become an intellectual defense against the potential pain and difficulty of love; the head afflicting the powers of the heart. By nature, the heart embraces everything — like the mother who loves every single strength, quirk and flaw in her child because it takes all of that to make the person who he or she is. We have the capacity to love everything that way; to be discriminating and at the same time loving wildly everyone and everything just as they are, including ourselves. This requires different notions of “perfections” and “imperfections” than we are generally given. The head thinks in such terms; the heart does not.