"Tolerate Our Self-Antigens, Tolerate Ourselves"

A couple of days ago, I learned about immune tolerance. What I can infer from that class is that immune tolerance interlocks with lymphocytes maturation. The barrier between both processes is a thin line, we can't talk about one of them without bringing up the other one.

And just like T cells maturation process, immune tolerance mechanism also shows a resemblance to not only our societal life but also a certain aspect of our general life that might be one of the closest aspects to us as an individual - which is the intrapersonal aspect.

What is it that the immune cells tolerate? It's the self-antigens. During the maturation process, immune cells experience an 'education' in which they learn to recognise non-self or foreign antigens and tolerate self-antigens (as in the immune cells give no response to self-antigens). 

Talking about the immune tolerance mechanism, cells which are unable to tolerate self-antigens will undergo either one of these processes:  elimination via apoptosis, receptor editing (only happen to B cells. Basically, it means they get another chance to 'learn'), alteration (T cells with self-antigens intolerance will be turned into T regulatory), inactivation (anergy is the immunology term for it), or suppression. 

The subsequent process that occurs to self-intolerant cells depends on the location of the immune tolerance process, peripheral or central. Take a look at the picture above.

Failure of the self-tolerance mechanism will lead to autoimmunity, which is not good, which is a whole different topic. So I'm going to stop at it. 

Just like our immune cells that must tolerate SELF-antigens, we must also tolerate our own SELVES. 

Say what? 

It's true! Hasn't anyone told you something along the lines of, "don't be too hard on yourself, mate" or "take it easy, buddy"? They're not just empty words. You shouldn't ignore them, because those sentences hold the truth to some extents.

Sometimes after facing an exam, and I think I didn't do my best, I feel disappointed at my own self. And I start to questioning myself, "why didn't I study enough?" "Why didn't I prepare myself well enough?"

I'm guessing you feel that way too at some points in your life.

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.