Think of your favorite salad. What’s your favorite ingredient? Some love tomatoes, others like carrots, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that the salad has variety, it’s interesting, it can change in endless ways, and each part can be enjoyed alone, a slice of garden ripe tomato with a dash of salt is a simple pleasure.

Much like a salad we all have our own unique and delicious properties that we can and do bring to world. Some people like us, some do not, and it’s nothing personal. There’s nothing wrong with the onion, just because it is unlike lettuce, they are simply different. There is nothing wrong with you because you cannot do, say or be something others are. There is nothing wrong with others because they are unlike you. One is no better or worse than another.

If a mushroom could talk, would it complain about it being a fungus? It would be ridiculous for it to complain about who it is or try to fix itself, for it is loved by so many for just being itself. Likewise it would be insane to complain at the mushroom for being fungus and not like a pepper. The things that makes a salads enjoyable is it’s variety of flavors, textures, colors and sensations when eaten together. The things that make us beautiful is that we are all different and have our own unique traits to being to the salad bowl of life. We have friends, family and loved ones that make up for what we are not. We are NOT lacking anything. What you think you need, or are deficient in, look around you, I promise someone has it and is willing to share.

But we are so much more complicated than vegetables. Are we? Do we need to be? Isn’t what is wrong with us also what makes us who we are? Indeed. In order to know light one must know dark. One cannot know how to be loving and compassionate without having gone through pain. One cannot court the muse of creativity without mourning her departure. Likewise god/the universe blew itself up so it could become many fragments, so it could experience and know itself. We are all these particles of the universe clumping together and reminding each other of that which we are, as individuals and as a whole. I see infinite traits, characteristics and possibilities when I scan the faces of my beloved and it brings me such joy.

That is not to say we cannot aspire to be better. It is not to say that we cannot admire and emulate that which we believe serves our higher purpose. Self improvement is always good as long as you are not trying to be something you are not, and making yourself miserable in the proccess. It simply means that you are prefect because you are you, being you. You are a perfect work in progress. If you were truly perfect and whole, you wouldn’t be here on earth having this human experience.

So when you do experience that makes you feel angry, embarrassed, ashamed, hurt, deficient, lonely, sad, bored, or other negative emotions as a result of what you think you lack, remember -- this is why you are not alone. This is an opportunity for divine grace to show up to heal you in the form of a friend when you are in need. You bring something to this world that others do not. Embrace YOU because you are the only one of you that will ever be, and you have something to ad to this salad that no one else does. Live it. Be grateful for you and only you can contribute your part to this delicious cosmic salad. Enjoy!