Perfectly imperfect...

I haven't written in a while. It's not that the words haven't been coming or a lack of inspiration... to be honest I'm not 100% sure what's been holding me back from posting. Other than a simple fear that whatever I write is not good enough. I'm a self confessed perfectionist, I want every thing that I do to be the best it can possibly be. Often this drive for perfection holds captive from ever doing anything to completion. I start something with this idea of what it should be and then at some point along the way to completion I realise that it is not going to be what I imagined. So I quit, I leave the imperfect project in the closet gathering dust. Yet another failure.

The same with my writing. I want everything I write to be deep and insightful. I have this silly dream of the simple words that I write somehow magically finding someone at the right time and moving of the page (or computer screen ) and floating through the air to land somewhere near your heart at the time that you most need them. The reality is that I have hundreds of files filled with uncompleted blog posts, articles, stories and book ideas sitting on my hard-drive gathering computer dust (or whatever it is that they gather). Incomplete, imperfect, forgotten moments of life's inspiration I wished to share.

This year for me has been a struggle on a personal lever possibly more than any year to date. The self imposed expectations at times more often than not have frozen my feet to the ground in fear of doing something wrong. This being grounded in fear is uncomfortable and in all reality depressing, it's like not being able to tell if you are happy or sad. This weird limbo where everything is in front of you but the choice is... I like the way Sylvia Plath put it in her book The Bell Jar

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

Perhaps perfection isn't the point of life, maybe aiming for perfection with my writing is a lofty unobtainable goal, there is the very real chance that even with everything that I write nothing I ever write will touch people. The thing that I am  slowly and painfully coming to realise is this... Life is not perfect and I am not, nor will I ever be perfect. So rather than beating myself up about the imperfections, my faults, stumbling blocks and living my life looking down and backward. Maybe my life should simply be about looking up and forward, and moving in that direction. Living fully, loving unconditionally and growing completely, with a full heart. Simply and imperfectly chasing the one who is.

A world without hate...

“Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of.” - Haruki Murakami

Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. It's often hard to detect behind the pain and wall of hatred but it's almost always there; like a warm woolly cardigan under a black leather jacket on a winters day. Warm, safe, comfortable and unseen. I suppose that's one of the reasons why people tend to cling to their hates so stubbornly, they sense that once the hate is gone they will be forced to deal with the pain and fears that may have never seen the light of day.

And so many of us find solace in the familiarity of our pain as it justifies our fears and our hates as they protect us from the vulnerability of getting hurt. But just for a moment imagine a world without hate, without pain and the fear behind it all. What would it look like? A world with vulnerability and an infinite for people to love.

“As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.” - George Harrison

The other side of darkness...

I recently had an incredibly personal article published. An article that took me two years to start and over two months to finish. It wasn't something I really planed to do although the thought had crossed my mind to share my story, the idea had never stayed long enough or with enough conviction for me to ever start writing anything. While I'd always thought it was a story and perspective that needed sharing I had never been willing to put myself out there; to make myself vulnerable and be the one to say what needed to be said.

As writer and researcher Brene Brown once said “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

Her words resonate some place deep within in a space where there are no words. The truth is writing honestly was an incredibly uncomfortable process but also an incredibly healing one. It involved reliving many of my most painful memories and making myself incredibly vulnerable; something I tend to avoid. But it was a process that lead me to the realisation that until I, until we are willing to open ourselves up, to let our invulnerability's be seen and share the darkness we have faced we will never fully come to terms with our past and discover the light and healing that is just on the other side of darkness. A light that we have come to know though and because of our pain.

“What happens when people open their hearts?"...
"They get better.”

Haruki Marakami

Failing Forward...

“In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve?

The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.

Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.

When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic.

Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.

Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.

Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.

Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?

Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem.

Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living.

Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.

Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.

The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success.

If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.

The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.

Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.

The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?

Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.

Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence.

Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might.

If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail.

The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface.

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” 

John Maxwell, Failing Forward

Every Broken Heart...

 

Someone once said that for every scar there is a story of survival. And they were right. The stories written on scars are never pretty, they can be heartbreaking, incredibly hard to read and even harder to tell. But along the lines of every scar there is a story of survival, a story of grace, a story of overcoming, a story of hope and of life. Many people never tell their stories, for reasons most us are unable to comprehend. But for those few who let their heartbreak stories be told, they often find that in the telling, in the sharing of their story there is healing. Healing not only for themselves but for those with whom they share.

It has often been said that the most powerful ministry is simply sharing two story's, your story and the story of the one that saved you. Is it possible that the story of us at our weakest is the story of Him at his best? Is it possible that our worst scars can showcase His healing? Is it possible that every broken heart is a glowing light? Is it possible that through honesty, through sharing our scar written stories we can find our purpose, our greatest ministry, a journey of peace and healing not only for ourselves but also to those who are now where we once were?

"But every broken heart is a glowing light
He will find it out in the darkness
Every lonely song is a brilliant sound
He will hear it out from a distance"
Sky Circles, Falling Up

The beginning…

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There is always a beginning, a starting point. Literally everything has one, even a day starts in a moment. There’s always a first breath, a blossom, a scream, a thought, a look, a word, a touch, a kiss, a single spark and a point of origin. Whether Christian, Atheist or Agnostic all agree that there is a beginning. All we argue over are technicalities.

What happens when the sun descends beneath the horizon and what happens when we taste our last breath? Our beliefs shape our answers to these technicalities and our answers to these technicalities shape our lives. There is a beginning to everything, even the end. As for the answers to the technicalities of the beginning. To believe in a God, chance or a chemical reaction; it’s entirely up to us. I choose to believe that it all began with God. I believe that “In the beginning there was God…”

“With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.” C. S. Lewis

Life illuminated...

 

Author and artist Henry Miller once wrote “Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.”

The idea of real love can often times bring out the romantics and cynics in force. The romantics argue that true and 'real love' exists, that it lasts if only you find the right one/ones. The cynics (myself usually included) lean towards the argument that the whole idea of 'real love' is just a grown-up version of Santa Clause; a myth we've been fed since childhood to keep us buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy.

Then there are those who argue that we have the ideal all wrong. In her book All About Love, Bell Hooks quotes Erich Fromm “To love somebody is not just a strong feeling – it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If lover were only a feeling there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go.”

She goes on herself to write “How different things might be if, rather than saying, 'I think I'm in love,' we were saying, 'I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on they way to knowing love,' Or if instead of saying 'I am in love' we were saying 'I am loving or 'I will love.”

The argument of 'real love' is one of those things like grace; we will never fully get it. As much as the cynic knows we will never attain it in perfection, something in us continues (despite all opposition) to believe that life is better with it. Life is better when we are striving to accept and give it more fully, even if our all attempts are watered down reflections of the ideal. 

And maybe just maybe there is a 'real love' that is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects and never demands. A love that replenishes, by grace going on and on. A love that burns, because it knows sacrifice. Maybe there is a love that is life illuminating if we choose to search for, accept and offer it.