Perfect, with room for improvement.
It sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it. Because we have this crazy idea in our heads that perfection means the end of improvement, that nothing can be added, that the process is complete.
Maybe because of your upbringing, you were taught that you had to be perfect, and that only by being perfect could you be enough.
I’m here to ask you to see things differently.
22 years ago today (as I write this) I came to this country to marry the woman I had fallen in love with. In what could be described as a very unconventional courtship, including long distance letters, phone calls and talk tapes (oh the pre-internet days), we forged a relationship that will celebrate 22 years of marriage next month.
Because she was perfect for me.
That’s not to say that she doesn’t have room for improvement, because she does, and so do I, but we were perfect for each other. If she had met me 2 years prior, we wouldn’t have worked. 2 years later, and it probably wouldn’t have worked.
If she had already reached a state of perfection, free from all flaws and imperfections, the chances are that she would never have looked at a guy like me.
But because of our imperfections, we were perfect for each other.
And yet we still try to improve, in ourselves, in our relationship, in our parenting. Each of us on our own journey, yet walking together hand in hand as we try to become perfect for each other in the ever evolving tapestry of our lives.
So I would ask you today to reconsider your idea of perfect.
Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the perfect person to help someone else, specifically because of your imperfections? In my work as a coach, and a healer, I have been blessed to share my imperfections with others, and help them understand that they too are perfect, with room for improvement.
Just like you are.
You see, when you accept that you can be perfect, and yet still have room to improve, then you remove some of the burdens that you carry.
Once you realize that you have worth, that you are perfect, even though you have imperfections, you free up that part of your soul that has been for so long struggling under a cloud of self recrimination.
And you empower that part of you that can lift, inspire, touch and heal another person, a family, a community, a country, a world.
Just know that you are perfect, with room to improve.
You ARE enough.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings