Log Post 30, Week 30: Finding a Perfect Life

Throughout this project, I worked on bringing about perfect moments—and now I ask, must we WORK to bring these changes about or just allow ourselves to shift ever so slightly in our bodies until we arrive at a new shore without having known we were on rough seas? During Betsy’s Artist’s Way tele-class while I was working on this book, we talked about finding the river. I love that metaphor of finding the river. We Earth travelers are all on a journey on the river of life, meandering, flowing over the rocks if we’re lucky, working through the obstructive branches, widening and narrowing in our ability to respond to the world and to be our best selves. We find our true selves as we go along, bit by bit, even as we change, the changes wrought in us becoming part of all the things going down that river with us. The bad stuff, if we go about it right, gets left behind. I’d been thinking about my own journey and my marriage, and then I arrived at home to find a pleasurably quiet empty house. I realized that I no longer felt judged and belittled—those were my feelings, and it was time to let them go. As I poured myself a glass of wine and made dinner and ate by myself, I knew that I had forgiven myself. The way I held up my own dinner on Paul’s late nights had been my way of continually trying to show him my worthiness. It wasn’t he who thought I was unworthy, it was me. And then I read this quote by Lauren King: “There are two kinds of perfect: The one you can never achieve, and the other, by just being yourself.” Funny, I had also come to the conclusion that I didn’t need to work on perfect moments but just had to experience them in my own authentic way. My life is full of perfect moments as long as I allow myself to be who I am. What is that perfection from within? I think it’s in the sweet moments of ease, the heartfelt conversations, the realization that we are not alone, the sense of community, and being present to God and the universe. How do we, as people living in this world, find perfection?