Monday, August 15, 2016

The beauty of imperfection - by Jim Apone

How many times have you started a sentence with “if only”,” I wish” or something similar? The problem doesn’t lie in the fact that we have hopes, dreams or desires, rather it lies in the fact that we think we are incomplete without these material things we long for. How much energy have we wasted thinking the perfect life is out there and it’s not ours? How many times do we relive the past wishing we would have done something different or we think of the perfect thing to say, an hour later of course. How often do we live our lives two weeks into the future or two weeks in the past? How often do we compare what we feel on the inside to what we see on the outside of others? All of this leads us to believe that we are somehow not living that fabulous life, that we fall short of perfection. That somehow everyone else has their act together and we just can’t seem to catch up let alone live that “perfect” life. It causes us misery, feelings of inadequacy, depression, and self-hatred and in some cases, large amounts of debt. How could you possibly measure up to a fantasy? The simple answer is you can’t. The good news is you don’t have to and you can stop right this second. I don’t know if I’ve described anything that you can relate to but that was exactly my story. I used to say I was looking for perfection in an imperfect world. It took me many years to realize that I had it backwards. Everything is already perfect; it was me that was imperfect and in that imperfection is exactly where I found joy. You might wonder what exactly changed. Well I can tell you I still have the same weight to lose, the same amount of money in the bank, the same friends who seemingly have the perfect life. I still have the same imperfect life but I came to realize that none of it mattered anymore. I realized that all the energy I was using living two weeks in the future or past were just making me miss the life I had right here, right now. I could start to enjoy birds singing outside at 6 in the morning instead of getting upset that they woke me up. After all they didn’t know they woke me up and they gave me their song for free. I could see the beauty in nature instead of rushing past worrying about something that might not even happen. I could laugh with a small child; I could sit with an elderly neighbor, I could take the time to be a human being instead of a human doing. I could laugh, love and cry. It was in that being present that I truly discovered all the beauty and joy that I had been rushing by barely noticing. I don’t want to give the impression that everything is all roses. Being present you feel the pain, the anxiety, the discomfort at a seemingly amplified level. The beauty is you feel it in the moment and then the moment passes. You feel it! So often we don’t want to experience pain or discomfort, we don’t want to feel at all so we stuff our emotions until they manifest in anger and we direct it towards some unsuspecting people, places or things (ourselves included). We simply hide from life when we feel it’s less than perfect. It never occurred to me what I was missing, hiding from the less enjoyable aspects of life, what lessons I was refusing to learn. What the pursuit of perfection had robbed from me. How I missed all the beauty that was imperfection. How the pain yields to joy, how the rain yields to sunny skies and how life goes on if you are willing to live it. I hope you have an imperfect life, I hope you find the beauty of imperfection and lastly I want to share a poem by Bob Perks that sums it up perfectly...
I wish you enough I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright. I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more. I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive. I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger. I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess. I wish enough "Hello's" to get you through the final "Goodbye." My friends, I wish you enough!