It Takes All Kinds

If a team is only as strong as its’ weakest link, is an individual only as strong as their weakest moment? And if so, how could anyone not have empathy for weakness in others? My therapist once told me that the things I hate most in other people are the things I hate most in myself. This was helpful, if unsurprising. I despise insecurity while pretending not to be wildly insecure. Contrarians annoy me, and yet I can’t help arguing in opposition. I don’t like waiting on tardy individuals, but happily arrive at my dentist appointment 15 minutes late with neither excuse nor apology. It’s funny, in a way, that our capacity for hatred is only as deep as our own self-contemp. Our capacity for love, on the other hand, far outweighs the love we give ourselves, or is that just me?

I thought about all of this as I lay on a sweat-soaked towel on the floor of my yoga studio. Most Mondays, Mike and I go to hot yoga, bending and twisting our stiff muscles and ligaments and pouring out the sweat one teacher likes to call “toxins.” If I don’t ingest anything toxic, nothing toxic should come out of me, I think as she instructs us to thread one arm under the other, wrap one leg around the other, and squeeze. “This posture is good for the thyroid,” she tells us. “It’s good for detoxifying the body.”

But back to my original question about weakness and empathy: if a team is only as strong as its weakest link, is an individual only as strong as their weakest moment? And if so, how could anyone not have empathy for weakness in others? Probably, because we despise weakness in ourselves, but don’t like to admit it. And so, we carry our…

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