Forget being perfect. Be yourself.
I recently struggled with a situation where I got my feelings hurt and was having trouble getting over it. Not a romantic situation either. The person most likely still doesn’t know they hurt my feelings. Ugh. I deinitely had unrealistic expectations of the person and the situation. After spending some time thinking about this, I realized that I was choosing to hold on to this. Kind of a key moment for me. Choosing to hold on to this? If you are familiar with Buddhism or have heard of The Dalai Lama, you may have heard the phrase “attachment is the source of all suffering”. I realized that part of my problem was that in this situation I had become attached to being hurt and disappointed. I couldn’t let go of it. Wow, right? It made me see the relevance of that statement about attachment and suffering. Its not just about being attached to money and “stuff.” Through this uncomfortable situation, I embraced a concept I had not really understood.
Do you ever have these aha moments? I hope so. These are part of our story, part of our evolution. I really love the feel of the proverbial lightbulb going on in my head. Here’s what I think I know. I will never be perfect. Heck I don’t even know what perfect means. Do you? I think “perfect” is some unachievable thing that each of us creates for our own needs. Oh and those change. It’s a changing, moving, unachievable thing. The lightbulb tells me to be the best me I know how and every day I learn new things about what that means. I started to grasp the concept of attachment recently. Pretty cool. Who knows what will be next?
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice”. Brian Herbert