Recently I’ve been thinking about how so many people reject the love of others or accuse it of being fake because they don’t think they deserve it. It’s a theme in our society. Throughout friendships and families and relationships, we don’t want to believe that someone could love us, what with all our faults and shortcomings. However, this attitude is so wrong.

What did we do to not deserve love? We are human. No matter what, we all have failings and sins. None of us are perfect. None of us are better or worse than anyone else. We all have our own problems, we all have our own secrets and things that have happened to us that make us feel less than we are. But who we are is not going to change because we’ve made a few mistakes. Who we are will always be the same. We will always be our mothers’ and fathers’ child, we will always be our brothers’ and sisters’ sibling, we will always be us. One little slip-up or trial will not change us that drastically. While little things can change us slightly, we won’t ever truly leave behind who we actually are and that is a person of great worth.

This is shown so well in the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Charlie, the main character, is a loner and has lost his closest friends over the years and has accepted it because he thinks there was nothing he could do. He believes that they had to leave him because he was the problem. He believes this. Not only does he believe it, he embraces it. He acknowledges it and moves on. It isn’t until later when he has found a group of people who accept him and want to spend time with him that he notices this phenomenon and thinks it is completely wrong. His friend Sam dates all of the wrong guys and he watches her go through relationship after relationship all without saying anything. He knows something is wrong, but he won’t talk to Sam about it. Instead he goes to his English teacher and talks to him about it. His main question is: “Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date?” and the answer Mr. Anderson gives him is, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” They could have stopped this conversation here and still made a good point, but Charlie had a follow up question to that answer. He asked, “Can we make them know they deserve more?” and Mr. Anderson replied with, “We can try.” This is all we can do. We will all feel inadequate until we or someone else tries to make it known that we do deserve more. No one deserves to be treated badly or abused. Not a single person in this world deserves these treatments. Not even the worst person in the world deserves abuse or cruelty because in the end it all boils down to whether or not they knew how special and important they were.

My favorite line from this movie and book is, "we accept the love we think we deserve" because someone finally put into words what needed to be said because it is true. No one ever thinks a certain person could love them or whatever for whatever reason, but it is not true. There is no limit to who can or can't love you or how much or how little love you "deserve," whether you are practically perfect or utterly imperfect, we all are going to be given more love than we believe we deserve, that's life. But we need to learn to accept it because believe it or not, we are our own worst critic and no matter what "we are infinite." Both of these lines are repeated throughout the story, over and over. The idea that I believe Chbosky wanted us to understand is that we are so much more important than we believe. We are, essentially, infinite and special and deserve to be loved to the extent, if not more, that people who truly love us show us. When Sam and Charlie finally have a conversation about this topic, we have reached the point where we are expecting one of these two lines to show up because they are the key points of the story. When Charlie tells Sam “we accept the love we think we deserve” in response to her question of “why [she and everyone she loves] pick people who treat [them] like [they’re] nothing?” we have come to terms with this truth that Mr. Anderson imparted on us earlier and are now beginning to understand it.

We don’t choose the love we get, but we do choose the people who get to love us. Sometimes we choose people who don’t love us as much as we should be loved and the reason for this is that “we accept the love we think we deserve.” The only problem with this is that we never think we deserve enough. We never think we deserve the best for us. We always think we can’t measure up and this is why we often accept what we get just because we think that is what we deserve. When what you get borders on abuse (or is abuse) and leads to expecting cruelty, there is a problem because none of that is what anyone deserves. No one deserves less than their worth and eventually they will find the person that treats them the way they should be treated. One day they will know how special they are and how important it is that they get the love they need and deserve. “I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.”