An individual is a carefully fashioned, unique world. The shape of the flaw that each person carries is also different. The flaw is the special shape of personal limitation; angled at a unique awkwardness to the world, it makes our difficulty and challenge in the world different from that of others.*
(John O’Donohue)

Look at the person sitting to the right of you. And if there’s no person on the right, look at the person to the left. That person and you differ at over a million locations in your DNA.
(Lee Silver)

Wabi is the Japanese word for the flaw that deepens the beauty and character of a thing.

In other words, flaws are to be valued – though not blindly.

No matter how much we try to bring our character and personality into the light, there will always be a part of us that dwells in shadow, though.

To embrace this, to seek integrity with our superpowers demands we also seek integrity with our flaws – is not the same as excusing: we can be without pretense and guile, and be strong:

Your soul will not want to neglect the regions of your heart that do not fit the expected. When you trust yourself enough to discover and integrate your strangeness you bestow a gift on yourself.*

A critical part of embracing and connecting with this strangeness is to live closer still to our values:

Values hold us to different standards for managing energy.^

Perhaps harnessing our strangeness, weirdness, flawed-ness, is what someone in the world is waiting for.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**Lee Silver, quoted in Mary Reckmeyer’s Strengths Based Parenting;
^From Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement.