Character Flaw

IT'S A BUG, NOT A FEATURE. 

Source: Pinterest(@lovspattinson)

A character flaw can be a simple foible or personality defect, which affects the character's motives and social interactions, but little else. The flaw can also be a problem that directly affects the character's actions and abilities. In this present age, it is safe to assume everyone knows what a bug is, especially concerning applications and programming. Even if that is not obtainable, how many times have you upgraded an application like WhatsApp and found that in the new upgrade, bugs were fixed? A bug in layman's terms is something an application does that is not supposed to do. Say if your app keeps logging you off automatically, it is most likely a bug. But sometimes, a bug can closely resemble the features of a particular application that unless you are told that's a problem, you will not believe it. Like you mean the application is not meant to automatically log me in once I open it but is supposed to ask for my password?

I got the inspiration for this particular piece some months back when I read an excerpt on Pinterest that concluded that whilst ordinarily, something appears to be a good thing, it isn't. Like she doesn't seem to make mistakes is a good enough thing, but if the reason why is that she never attempts anything new, then it is a flaw, a mistake of sorts, a bug if you would say and not the feature of that person. Moving further, the reason I decided to stick with this narrative of bugs and features is that applications undergo upgrades over and again because it is someone's responsibility to monitor the codes and pick out the bugs to fix them and to make the usage of the application a lot better. And we are humans, we have the things that serve us, and they appear to be what we can term "the way we are", but if we take our time to look at the root and origin of those behavioural patterns, we find out that it seems right, but it is not right. We can improve on that, we can become better if we work on it. And unless we identify the bugs or mistakes, there is no guarantee that it can be fixed because it is always going to appear like the real thing, and we will relax in our toxic patterns that on the surface harm nobody except it does, and it reveals itself in the long run. 

For most of this year, I have found myself in a very uncomfortable situation. What I mean is this, with the amount of time I have to spend with myself away from thinking about another person in an almost obsessive way, I have had quite a lot of time to learn about and most importantly listen to myself. Loneliness as I am beginning to learn doesn’t have to be a bad thing. When you are left with yourself, the only other place to turn to is inwards. Now to drive this point home and leave a clear understanding of what I mean by a character flaw, bugs and all, I decided to make a practical example. Keeping in line with the watchword to be HOT (humble, open and transparent), I am going to be using myself as an example. 

To start, I tried highlighting the things I do that, on a normal level seems like a good thing but in retrospect, are unhealthy. Then I tried to identify patterns in such things. Going further, I tried to sort out what is likely going to look like a feature, in this case, the things people are going to say is good behaviour or the things people are most likely going to envy me for then flip it over after successfully identifying them as toxic behaviours. The last thing I did was collaborate with my friends. I told them to call me out on all my nasty behaviour so that I didn't in any way consider myself a Saint and try to gloss over my faults. And it left me with a list and a goal, if I can find my faults and point them out, then I can go on to begin to work on and fix them. 

“GOOD” IMPULSE CONTROL.
I mention it somewhere that I am self-indulgent, so if you have seen that, I am expecting you to say this isn’t true. Apart from the things I have a weakness for, chocolate, warm hugs and so on, I rarely do things on impulse. I am not spontaneous, I don’t like to take risks. In everything I do, I try to think of every possible outcome and if the chances of success are very low, I give up. Even when the chance of success is high, I most likely would stay away from something new. So impulse control is good, but the fact that I only ever think of things and never do them shows there is a flaw somewhere. 

SELF-RELIANCE.
I can do all things, and most times, I don’t wait for Christ to strengthen me. I always want to fix everything, handle every situation myself, and everyone just agrees that I am independent and strong-willed. I can fix it. But when I find myself in situations out of my control, I rather go down with it than ask for help from someone else. I am terrified of asking for help. What if I get rejected, what if the person doesn’t do it the way I envisioned, what if the person takes over what I am working on and my favourite excuse for never asking for help, what if I am bothering whoever I am asking to help me. We all know that trying to do everything yourself is going to drain you, so I am going to leave it at this point. 

I RATHER NOT SAY ANYTHING. 
When I asked my friends to call me out on my nasty behaviour, every one of them mentioned this. So yes, this is a big problem. Don’t ask me what I feel about something, especially if there is a chance I am going to hate it because I wouldn’t say anything. I can dislike, be displeased, about to kill someone because of a terrible situation I find myself in, and I wouldn’t say anything. I think I struggle with letting people know what I think about something. And it isn’t for the things I find unfair or terrible, it can spill into the things I love and want so badly. It can spill into my relationships with other people and the way I feel about it. I am very expressive about non-living things because somehow, they don’t have emotions, but for humans with emotions, I am not sharing. And it is so funny that I always end up having to vent almost whenever I am exhausted with burdening myself about certain situations.

I WILL LET YOU WALK OVER ME.
You can say I am a very supportive and agreeable person. You need someone on the team to do everything, call me. You want to make promises you don’t intend to keep, call me. You want to treat someone way less than they should be treated, call me. I have mentioned earlier that I wouldn’t say anything to you. I am just going to start a countdown to when I am going to be free from you. It was a friend that pointed this out, he said, Seyi, You don’t like to hold people accountable for what they have said or what they are supposed to do. 

IN KEEPING THE PEACE.

I am going to just link the last two points within this one. If I refuse to say how I truly feel about something or refuse to hold people accountable for their actions or inactions, what do you think I do to manage those situations? It is either talking to someone else that is most likely going to understand me and what is going on or throw a tantrum. Honestly, it is a bit of both. In keeping the peace, I act out. I become resentful or vengeful. I begin to find ways to deal with someone for making me feel that way. I begin to do every other thing when the best I could have done is just have a conversation with you about the way I feel towards a situation and hold you accountable. 

ONCE BITTEN, WHAT’S THE COUNT FOR SHY AGAIN?

I have a stupid thing I say whenever I am sick and refuse to take my medications, this sickness better takes me out because I am not interested in taking it out. I ended up taking my medicine though, I am an adult now, and I didn’t mean that. But in life, I think I apply that to every toxic situation or environment I find myself in. No matter how toxic it gets, no matter how unhealthy it becomes, no matter how much of a tantrum I am beginning to throw, no matter the extent of my acting out, be rest assured, I am not going anywhere. And yes, it always takes me out. It always leaves me broken, it always chips something away from me. And somehow at the end of the day, I find myself a castaway from a compilation of all my mistakes and with a chance to start all over again. But I have said I have “good” impulse control right, I am only going to think of a thousand ways to make it better but never act on it. At least until now.

See, sitting down to write all this is daring myself to never find me in this cycle again. It is refusing to continue to do things the way I am used to. It is trying to check myself at any point and ask, is this the old way or can it be better? I am not saying I am going to start telling everyone in my life now the way I feel about our relationship, some of those things are going with me to my grave, but it means I am going to try. And I am going to ensure moving further, to be more open and expressive. To be honest, I am going to give the rationale behind not saying the way I feel, and that is, I am afraid of being too much. I am afraid of overreacting, overexpressing, or being too emotional about something. I am scared that by the time I say the way I feel about something, I would be made to feel like I have done too much already. But I am working on it. I have no other choice.

I am going to end with this, in an episode of Doing the Devil's Tango podcast by Alex Meyers, he said not to be yourself. His reasoning is this: you can become better, you can work on your flaws and mistakes, you can learn to identify your strengths and weaknesses and learn to use them to your advantage. But if you only want to be yourself and not choose to grow and evolve, you are going to miss out on a lot of things in the long run because you will not be equipped with what is needed for you to be. What I am saying is this, don't just be yourself, become a better you. Become your most actualized self, and it is going to start with you identifying your flaws, especially the things that appear to serve you on the surface, even if they don't. Your flaws are bugs, not features.

I know this is a very long read, but I had to put it out. Please leave a comment below or send a mail to theestherian@gmail.com. I will love to hear from you. Have a beautiful week ahead.

With Love,

The Estherian.