Perfection

The other day, Austin Andrews (@RetroFitAustin -- one of the finalists from Season 11 of the Biggest Loser) tweeted the following:

 

Even after posting a song about loving myself for who/what I am now, I'll admit that there are times when I feel down about my my body, or even my efforts to take care of my body.  I will often read my letters to my younger self and my future self as motivation for what I'm doing now.  They remind me to honor the young child that needed guidance and to continue on the path that will bring me to the person I will be.  I even re-read my love letter to myself if I'm really down.  

But there are even times when I'm stuck in the cycle of scrutinizing and self-judgment.  If I cannot awaken from the trance, I find myself going even further back into my life to snap out of it.  So to Austin, I replied:

Now, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but in that moment—when my parents first held me—I was perfection.
PERFECTION per·fec·tion noun \pər-ˈfek-shən\

1: the quality or state of being perfect: as (a) freedom from fault or defect : flawlessness (b) maturity (c) the quality or state of being saintly

2 (a) an exemplification of supreme excellence (b) an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence

3: the act or process of perfecting
In that moment, all that mattered was that I was breathing.  There were no expectations, no judgments, just relief and joy because I was alive.  Having 10 fingers, 10 toes, and being in perfect health was a gift.  Even if I had arrived early, had 9 toes, and/or screamed incessantly for hours, it didn't matter.  There was a time in my life when my parents called me perfection. 

There has been a lot of time in between now and those first moments (almost 31 years), and lots of things have either succeeded in convincing me that I am not perfect or tried their hardest.  Self-doubt.  Letting society tell me how I should feel about myself.  Striving and failing.
 
Allowing myself to feel the love in that moment is not vanity. 
Reflecting on being called "perfection" is not self-centeredness or conceit.

and so....
I want to re-define "perfection":
It will no longer be a word that holds me hostage to constant comparison, judgment, or scrutiny.
It will no longer be a word that allows me to compare myself, my journey, or any other part of my unique experience to someone else, someone else's journey, or someone else's unique experience.

Perfection will be the word I use to remind myself that there is joy in just being alive.

To that end, I am, and will always be, perfection.

3 comments

Fantastic post! I once wrote a post about the myth of imperfection in which I sort of came to the same conclusion...we're all perfect and that saying we're not is sort of an excuse. And then just the other day I wrote this:

"It's only when we stop trying to be perfect that we stop failing. The imperfect person overcomes."

And what I meant is that in "trying to be perfect" what we're really doing is trying to be something other than who we are.

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KCLA -- As always you and I seem to share the same brain waves.

Isn't it such a wonderful thing to give ourselves permission to be who we are?

I mean, I think it's hard to not want to change/fix the things we see as broken (bad habits, weight issues, surface details). But if we're able to figure out who we are at the very core of our beings and say "that's enough" it makes everything else not just bearable but more joyful.

free even.

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Great post... I've just written about my quest for perfection (as opposed to just being a better version of me!) as well. It's a challenge though - changing one's mindset after years of thinking in a certain way!

Deb

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