Today I want to share with you an ancient story that I found inspiring and interesting. There was once a woman who, every day, carried two jugs to the river to bring her family water to use. On the surface, the two jugs look the same; however, deep down, one jug is unscathed while the other is cracked on one of its sides.

The woman who carried these two jugs didn’t ever complain about the cracked one; instead, she treated them alike, happily filling them with water and carrying them to her family for vitality. One day, the cracked jug apologized to the woman, saying it felt ashamed that it could only every day carry half of the jug of water to her family with the crack on its side leaking water on the way. The woman replied to it with a smile, asking it, from tomorrow on, to notice the flowers that it has unwittingly irrigated with its leaking water from the crack, depicting they have grown so beautifully with its water. Furthermore, the woman asked the cracked jug not to be ashamed, citing its imperfection has done something wonderful to the flowers that grow on the roadside without people irrigating them, telling it its imperfection has brought beauty to the world.

We are all imperfect and we hate being so because we don’t want others to criticize us as imperfect, seeing such criticism as derogatory. We may not know our imperfections will work wonders if we can make good use of them to render our world a beautiful place to live and our lives the most meaningful and contributive. Many times, it is our imperfection that makes us known, unique, outstanding, or even legendary.