"Tolerate Our Self-Antigens, Tolerate Ourselves"

And then at some other times . . .

Have you ever felt over-the-top motivated? When you're about to face an exam and you're aiming for an A, what do you do? 

For me, exam weeks equal coffee-induced sleepless nights plus brain-racking days. Purely my fault, I never really pay attention in class, so I learn more or less seven weeks worth of a subject in one night, or twenty-four hour, or one day and a half at the most. It's awful. Maybe the same goes for you, maybe not, I can't tell, I'm not you. Ambition is good, but too much of it can be dangerous. (I'm writing this more for my own reminder than for reminding other people, by the way.) But seriously, don't beat ourselves up. 

We're all humans. We are apt to mess things up due to our inherent imperfection. Sure, when we do something wrong, we must fix it the best way we can. Basically, do our best at anything. But what do we do when our best isn't good enough? I think we should peek into our little immune cells (those cells which tolerate self-antigens) and do what they do. Tolerate. I think, and this is purely my opinion, we should tolerate ourselves. Because otherwise, we could be even more chaotic. Our intolerance to ourselves, our constant self-blaming could eat us up, could drive us crazy. It's true what they say. "Don't be so hard on yourself!"

One thing to remember, though: tolerating is neither forgetting nor giving up. Tolerating ourselves means we embrace our failure, our flaw, or our mistake, fix it if we can, keep moving forward whether or not we're able to fix it - don't dwell on the dark side, and most importantly, be grateful along the way.