Last week I kept seeing an ad in my Facebook feed for a t-shirt that said, “Be real not perfect.”  Each time I saw it, I thought a little bit harder and a little bit deeper about what those words were really saying.

I grew up with a mother who expected perfection, perfection in everything and from everyone around her.  As I child, it was in my best interest to do everything within my power to fulfill those expectations.  In things like school, sports, and music, it seemed easy to meet her expectations for being “perfect.”  I studied enough to make straight A’s.  I worked hard enough to swim fast enough to win races.  And, I practiced long enough to sit first chair in band and orchestra.  The struggles came for me as I failed, in her mind, to have perfect friends, date perfect guys, have perfect children, keep a perfect house, believe in the perfect things…you get the picture.  It wasn’t that I was trying to be rebellious and intentionally disappoint.  Rather, I had no idea what perfection looked like to her with regard to these things; I still don’t.  And yet, I kept trying.  

Old habits die hard.  Through most of my adult life, even after my mother was gone, I was driven to be a perfectionist.  Through the years, I realized that I did not like that about myself.  Sometime around age fifty, my whole attitude changed.  Perhaps I finally grew into that college minor I have in philosophy and fell into a pattern of thinking that led me to believe that perfect does not exist…anywhere or in anything.  I was struck with the truth that for my entire life I had been trying to be some kind of fictional character when what I actually wanted was to be a real person.  I wanted to be authentic, genuine, WYSIWYG flaws and all.  That’s it; I wanted to be real.  You would think that being truly who you are would be so much easier that striving to be the elusive “perfect,” but at the beginning it was much harder.  I had to learn what being real actually looked and felt like.  And then I had to embrace the notion that my reality was OK.  It has taken ten plus years to get to the place where I truly believe that it is better, that I am better, to ”be real, not perfect.”

What does this way of thinking mean on a daily basis?

As I sat down to write on this second day of the new year, I realized that I had not written morning pages yesterday morning, something I do almost every.  One day into the year and I had already “messed up.”  Or had I?  Thinking about that today, I concluded that perhaps forgetting to write yesterday was my first learning experience of 2023.  I did not write.  My journal for 2023 begins on January 2 instead of January 1.  Other than that, nothing in my world has changed.  

I also noticed that the flowers on the table where I was sitting were a little less than fresh.  Fallen petals were scattered around the vase’s base.  Some of the leaves curled and withered.  And then there is some of the arrangement that is still vibrant and full of life.  I was struck with an intense feeling that this scene was beautiful…and real…and perfect.  Wait!  There is no such thing as perfect!  Or, maybe there is.  Perhaps what is real, what is true and authentic, is also what is perfect.  All I could think at the moment this idea drifted into my consciousness was that I didn’t have time to dig deeply into  this simple piece of complex thought that had wandered uninvited into my head.  Yet there it stayed.  And still stays.  I think it may be with me throughout 2023.  We’ll see.  Today, at least, it has consumed much of my mental energy.  I’m OK with that.  For me there are many layers to peel away in trying to clarify and comprehend the concepts of realness and perfectness and the relationship, if indeed there is one, between the two.  

I realize that this post is not a compendium of cohesive thought.  I’m posting it in the name of keeping it real.  Also, it is only January 2.  Maybe in the next three hundred sixty-three days I’ll get it all sorted out in my little head.  Check back here every now and then if you are interested in how I am coming along with that.

Wishing everyone a happy, real, perfect, perfectly real, really perfect, or maybe, for now, just a thought-filled 2023!