Love People, Never Idolize Them.

There's this thing my coach would always say. He'd go, "Never idolize anybody." He would even jokingly call me an idol worshipper. I got the gist, but I don't think I fully understood the implications until recently, when he said it again. This time, I honestly understood what he meant.

There's a meme I've seen several times on my status today. I even reshared it. It read, "Human beings will disappoint you, including me." It was funny, but it was also true. You see, even the best of us, or rather, at our very best, we're still human beings, and that makes us deeply and truly flawed.

And that's exactly why we must, as much as possible, never idolize people.

It's okay to admire, respect, look up to and love people greatly. There's, however, a pretty thin line between doing these things and idolizing someone. A line so thin that you might not even realise when you've crossed it.

When you place people on pedestals they were never meant to occupy, it becomes a problem because, as humans, they will inevitably fall short. And that's okay. But guess who ends up hurt? You. The person who saw them as something beyond human, the person who made an idol out of them.

Dearest reader, the more intentional we are about not idolizing the people we love, respect and look up to, the less likely we are to be deeply hurt by their shortcomings. In fact, perhaps disappointment wouldn't hit as hard if we constantly reminded ourselves that the same people we hold in such high esteem are human too, and just as capable of flaws as the rest of us.

And acknowledging this doesn't make them any less worthy of our love, admiration or respect. It simply means we're allowing them to be human.

Nobody is perfect, think about the patriarchs of faith in the Bible. From Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, and even David, the man after God's own heart. These were men who walked with God, yet they had their fair share of character flaws. God walked with them despite their imperfections.

Perhaps there's something to learn from that. We can love people deeply, appreciate the good in them, learn from them and celebrate their strengths without expecting them to be incapable of getting things wrong.

People are people, and we must allow them to be just that.

@favvy_Okwans🖤.