suffering as impediment: love around it

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. ―Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I posted the above quote because it resonated with me, evoking Shakepeare's Sonnet 116, the one where he writes that in a marriage of true minds, love does not admit impediments. I meditate on this poem with some regularity. Many Shakespeare scholars have written about this poem, debating whether it is about romantic love or love in general.  I think more such scholars conclude it is about love, and not just romantic love.

 This poem has resonated with millions since Shakespeare wrote it hundreds of years ago. It's not like I am special to focussing on it. After meditating on this poem many times, it once it me powerfully that (1) oh, I have to love people in spite of their human imperfections, love around the 'impediment' of their flaws and (2) I needed to love myself even though I am deeply flawed.

Here's Sonnet 116, since I referenced it:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

My failure to love anyone -- anyone -- around whatever impediments I perceive in them is, indeed, my failure.