Living in the Future
It’s hard not to get ahead of myself sometimes. When I’m pleased or feel excited, I tend to extrapolate and imagine how cool things will be “when _______ happens.” (And no, I’m not encouraging you to play Cards Against Humanity in this post. Although…that could be amusing. And you know which among you would eagerly offer a shockingly off-color suggestion for that blank.)
What I mean is, there’s a part of me that was, as my Irish sisters say, “chuffed” when I got to my 50thpost. And instead of just ‘being’ with that good feeling, I started extrapolating. “When I get to this day next year, I’ll be into the 400s! I’ll be writing my 415thpost!”
Aaarggh. I do not want to do that to myself! And yet I know it’s human nature and therefore futile to hope I won’t succumb to this temptation – and often. But it sure is tedious, always ‘moving the bar,’ so to speak, and assuming the elusive next goal will be way better and more impressive to achieve than this one. And what does it get me?
N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Nothing at all. Except it does manage to snatch my present sense of accomplishment from the jaws of a healthy, yet un-inflated, self-esteem. Always keeping myself guessing, I suppose.
But I mention this not because I remained in that mind-space. I saw where my habitual thinking wanted to take me and I snagged it, brought it back, and stomped it into unconsciousness. (Just kidding! Seeing if you were paying attention.)
No, I saw where my habitual thinking wanted to take me and I did indeed snag it. But I just rolled my eyes, laughed at myself, and hoped I’d make it to #51, while enjoying the simple pleasure of having reached the 50th. And I’m mentioning all of this because I firmly believe we all need to remember that we’re not here to be perfect!
No matter how hard we try, we’re not perfect. And we’ll never be perfect. Why? Because perfection is not only unattainable. It’s boring. And we wouldn’t learn anywhere near as much as we do living in our imperfection.
Perfection is Unattainable (and Boring)
We’re not going to find much, if any, profound and meaningful satisfaction with either ourselves or how we’re meeting our commitments by reaching some arbitrary, magical number of posts published, journal pages written, photos taken, or books read per month. The sooner we realize that, the better.
And trust me, I remember when I used to think every one else could strive for – or be satisfied by – mediocrity, but I was different. I would persist. I would do ‘it’ (whatever exacting standard I set for myself) through sheer force of will. And man, while I would not trade the level of success I generally enjoyed for my efforts, I would lighten up just a little on the jumping into the future gig. Because as cliché as it sounds, it is sheer insanity to pin all your happiness on the successful attainmentof a goal, on breaking the tape, or on writing that 1111th post.
The test of our humanity is to figure out the trick of living our lives in fullness and balance as we strive toward accomplishing that goal.
And by that I mean setting a goal (i.e., committing to writing 1111 consecutive blog posts), and finding a sense of satisfaction and healthy pride in oneself every day a post gets published. Extra credit for those days when a post has the effect of speaking to the hearts of those who read it, for those are precious.
There is something to be said for showing up. For being willing to not always be some shining example of awesomeness that you wish others would perceive you as being. But if we’re honest? The ones we’re actually trying hardest to impress are the exacting bastards that live inside of us.
They’re tamable. At least I’m determined to give you a glimpse of how I make the effort to live with them. In balance. Here’s to 2019. May we LIVE this together! In perfect imperfection!
(T-1060)