Striving for perfection

“How can I ask my mind and body for perfection when I am not giving it perfect to start with?”  I pondered this question tonight and as I worked through what this meant to me I found myself plagued by the idea of perfection itself. 

I have traveled along the journey of healing and regaining my health, though I can’t pinpoint exactly when I lost the magical being I think I was before.  I have always strived for perfection.  Consistency, is what I have professed searching for, while all along knowing I am probably looking for a perfect I believe I have seen in others but don’t know if I will ever find.  A mystical character that has been built up in my mind by everything I have been taught or seen as a woman in the society in which I was raised.  Now I know we like to blame commercials, the media and marketing for this grave error in our thinking but I believe it is much greater than that.  As a collective we have stopped allowing for authenticity in society and only put out the best view of ourselves on a daily basis.  When was the last time you saw someone really struggling?  It could be from any number of issues that plague us all as human beings.  Has it been a while since you have walked along side someone suffering, when it wasn’t from a grave disease that could not be hidden?  How often do you see someone who truly pulled back the preverbal covers on their life to give you a glimpse at the ugly underneath?  When there is a struggle that isn’t glamorous and can be hidden, that is what we do.  The estrangement with a spouse, the lack of fulfillment in our jobs, the sense of failure as a parent, the joy we once had but is now lost, the underlying illness or fatigue that we hope will just go away.  Am I the only one who has gone through any and all of these things?  

I have walked this talk.  I hid an illness for a long period of time, though it wasn’t as hidden as I would have liked to think.  I didn’t want to show weakness, that I wasn’t in control or, heaven forbid, needed help.  And to what end?  I walked alone and didn’t have the support that perhaps would have made the road easier or at least, a little less lonely.  More than that, I didn’t allow those around me to learn from my experience, my anguish, hurt and frustration.  I hid all that could have been beautiful because I didn’t think it looked beautiful on me.  It showed a lack of the perfect version of me that I thought I put out in the world.   ​

And then my eyes opened a little wider.  The world isn't as perfect as we make it out to be.  That boss who you think has it all, also fights battles that you don’t know about.  The guy who makes a living working on his body and health to be a symbol of what is possible with the right self-care, nutrition and spiritual work, he gets sick too.  We all have down days, moments of despair, fears that hold us back in life and families that are anything but perfect.  And the moment that we offer ourselves the ability to just live, live with passion, with the authenticity and vulnerability that lets down the armor of perfection and doing “fine” in life we not only take an amount of pressure off of ourselves that can't be measured, we also share in the real nature of what being a human being today really means.