Everyone you meet carries both strengths and weaknesses. No one is exempt. Yet, somehow, the balance of what we notice tilts depending on how we feel about them.
Think about those you admire. Their strengths seem so obvious, so dominant, that their flaws fade into the background. It isn’t that they lack weaknesses; it’s that your admiration works like a spotlight, illuminating only what you wish to see. The rest gets swallowed in shadow.
Now flip it. With people you don’t admire, the weaknesses glare at you. Every shortcoming feels magnified, while their strengths shrink into irrelevance. You don’t deny their talents — you just don’t weigh them enough to matter.
This is the quiet trick our minds play: admiration is bias.
And all biases are rooted in self-interest. We see more of what serves us, and less of what doesn’t. The person we admire reflects something we value, aspire to, or wish to be connected to. The person we dismiss reflects something we reject, fear, or find useless to our goals.
Self-interest is not evil; it is human. But it is blinding. It distorts perception and convinces us that people are more one-sided than they truly are.
If we remember this, we might look at others with clearer eyes — recognizing both strength and weakness in equal measure. And perhaps, we’ll learn to catch ourselves when admiration blinds us… or when disdain distorts the view.
— Osasu Oviawe