The Mirage of Perfection

If you are waiting for life to be perfect, that is the only thing you will ever do.

Have you ever found yourself waiting around for all the stars to align, knowing that as soon as it happened everything would be right? Have you ever gotten a case of the "if only's"? This should be that way and that should be this way? Yup, its the search for perfection. Well, guess what... You've been wasting away your life!

Perfection. Perfection doesn't exist. Life is mostly the messy bits with every once in a while a splash of joy, happiness, or elation thrown in. It is a jumble of bright colors, a palette of attitudes and all of it covered with so many brush strokes of personal agendas that no single source of inspiration can be claimed.

If the only influences that ruled how things worked out were human beings you would only have a one in seven billion chance of actually being the one in control. If you add in the multiple nonhuman variables, you'd have to admit that anyone thinking that control was even minimally achievable must be on the verge of insanity.

Life is dynamic, that means it is ever changing. Waiting for perfection is a foolish endeavor. Perfect for what? Can any of us even wrap our brains around the breadth of life's complexity to even have a shot at being able to recognize perfection if it did cross our paths?

Perfection is impossible because it requires a static moment... a moment where nothing changes. That is not life. So, what can you do? You can do your best in any given situation or environment. Doing your best is good enough. You will have to learn to live without perfection and find the value in the 'doing' of your best. You cannot control life, but you can create change by doing, by changing your part of the world. Be heartened in your ability and take pride in doing your best, all the while knowing that whatever you do or create will change because it must.

Do not wait for perfection. Live your life. Waiting is for the dead and dying; it is wasted on the living.

Something Is Better than Nothing

"In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing." Theodore Roosevelt

Sometimes worrying about what is the right thing to do becomes a form of paralysis. You cannot give yourself over to indecision. Indecision has created more havoc and pain in the world than is any way necessary.

When you approach a decision, trust yourself. More importantly, trust in the goodness of the world. Try to do the right thing. If the decision you make ends up being the wrong thing, then you have made a mistake. Mistakes are the opportunity life gives us to learn, to augment our skill set, to become better people. The learning we experience by making mistakes is a priceless investment in our fullness. Obviously, one shouldn't try to make mistakes. But, there is no need to fear making mistakes.

The worst thing anyone can do is nothing... not doing the right thing, not doing the wrong thing. Doing nothing surrenders you to whatever comes along. Contrary to what you might think doing nothing is a decision. Others will decide your fate, but you are making the decision to be accountable for the results of the decision to do nothing.

Traveling Light

Live life as a passenger, as a tourist, not as a baggage 'handler'.

We all carry baggage... you know, those left over, unresolved issues of human interaction. Most of our baggage we accepted without any thought. 'They' said..."you're this" or "you're that" and we just said "Okay, I guess that's right."  'They' are the bodies outside ourselves, either actually in-the-flesh people or images of people that comes to us through some technology.

Its never the first person that states something that has the power. The power in any situation is the second voice, the voice that validates the first. With the baggage that any of us pick up is done with the power of the second voice, ours. Ours when we accept any outside judgement of who we are, what we are or our intrinsic value.

Our baggage gets really heavy and difficult when we let ourselves become both voices... the voice that negatively judges us and the voice that agrees. Sometimes, we become so proficient at accepting judgements that our baggage literally paralyzes us and our lives become about managing our baggage. We no longer can see our path, our talents or our opportunities. We become baggage handlers, pushing and putting our never ending suitcases in different order so they will all fit in the dark hold.

We need to wean ourselves from this dreary existence. We need to strive to be passengers in life, looking out the windows. We need to be tourists, stopping here an there to experience the vast and wonderful differences in our world and those who people it. We need to travel light with just a carry-on case... you know, the ones that fit easily in the overhead bin.