Defect or feature

The culture of self-acceptance likes turning every flaw into a hidden virtue. The formula is pleasant, but it sometimes prevents you from recognising a real defect and deciding whether it needs repair.

Some traits really do depend on context. Slowness can mean thoroughness. Stubbornness, resilience. Sensitivity, the ability to notice small changes. A reluctance to socialise much, the ability to work alone for a long time.

Other flaws remain flaws: cruelty, unreliability, the habit of shifting responsibility. They should not be painted a bright colour and declared part of the design.

It is worth sorting traits into four groups:

• worth fixing;
• worth compensating for;
• worth accepting;
• can be turned into an advantage.

An uneven pipe in an interior sometimes becomes an expressive detail. A leaking pipe needs repair, however much you light it up.

Accepting imperfection means not refusing to change but ending the war for unattainable flawlessness. A person will always be left with limitations, oddities and areas where they look less convincing than planned.

People really do find it easier to trust a living human being than a perfectly polished surface. But deliberate scruffiness quickly becomes a genre of self-presentation too. Imperfection is not obliged to be a brand. It is enough for it not to be a verdict.

The most popular repackaging is “I am just a direct person”. Sometimes this really does mean that the person says the unpleasant truth when it is useful and takes on its consequences. More often it means they enjoy saying unpleasant things and the consequences go to the listener. A selectivity check helps tell them apart: is the directness applied to people higher up the ladder, or does it stop exactly at that line. The second common case is “that is just how I am, I cannot plan”: the phrasing declares permanent something that is usually solved by a calendar and a reminder.

Sorting into four boxes works as long as the first one gets used. If everything a person has fits into “accept” and “turn into an advantage”, that is not self-acceptance but a closed intake desk.