I am never exactly as I wish to be. My ideal self would have a different outfit on. I would be freshly showered and my hair would look great. I would be stylish. Fun. Light. Happy. I would be clear headed, rested and full of energy. I would be feeling clean and healthy having only eaten cleanly and exercised…..
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the eight-color boxes, but what you’re really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I’ve got a few missing. It’s okay though, because I’ve got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though….
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider…..
I’ve been thinking about the slippery concept of destruction lately and how it relates to the human experience. The word destruction typically has only negative connotations in western society but that’s not true of the concept throughout cultures and time. In the instance of Yoga I am familiar with the Dance…..
I’m still digging it up, still brushing it off, but there’s something here. Something is just below the surface, and I’m wiggling it like a loose tooth and every now and then I get the sense that if I knock it free I may find more of myself down there, parts of me that had been covered over.
I walked about thirteen blocks enjoying the cottony mist on my face and thinking about how being outside, doing the walk, I could see so much more than I could from the warm safe comforts of home. It was in the doing, stepping out into it, that I was able to see my way forward.
And in the manner that typically plays out between mother and grown daughter I thought, wow is she off the mark. But it sat there and it marinated and I came to have a little deeper insight on it. I realize now that there are two different kinds of perfectionism. I had not recognized that the tune I was dancing to was one of them.
It is a terrible feeling to feel misunderstood by someone. I am not referring to being misunderstood on a particular issue but rather the more fundamental kind of misunderstood, when someone does not “get” you.
What do I mean by “little dings”? I mean those seemingly small decisions you make in the course of a day or evening that go against what you know to be the right thing to do. The more you know that what you are doing is not the right thing to do, the bigger the ding.