It’s been a while since I’ve written. And yes, I have an excuse, but is there ever a good excuse for not writing when you fancy yourself a writer. 🙂
It has been a whirlwind spring and summer, and all of the sudden I find myself looking at the leaves turning colors and the kids are back at school. How did that happen?
This spring, an opportunity popped up in my email to get back into tech work. I went into it thinking, “Hey, I know this stuff, and this might be fun.”
The company I’m working with set everything up as a challenge at first, and that’s the kind of thing that sucks me in and gets me going. Challenges. I tend towards not shying away from them. Some of them I should, but this one has been really good. It is akin to being really into crossword puzzles and finding a new crossword puzzle on my desk every day. And with recent changes, it’s more like, “Take as many crossword puzzles as you want.” (Now I need to learn some boundaries and force myself to take a break.)
I am really enjoying my work and it dovetails nicely into my life. I enjoy the challenges, I enjoy the people, and I enjoy learning something new every day.
The benefits to me have been great, but I’m seeing how inspiring it is for my kids, too. Max at age 15 loves computers, and seeing me work through challenges and succeeding in both big and small ways is inspiring him to work through his own challenges and learn new things. He’s taking a college-level computer class offered at his school, and he’s reading the book in his spare time and finding things that aren’t exactly right and correcting them. (I don’t know where he gets it, this perfectionism.)
Claire, still trying to come up with a new way to get a horse in the backyard, asks me how she can learn what I do so she can make money and buy the horse and all of the accoutrements of equestrian life. Of course, at age 8, the work I do is all a bit much for her to understand.
“Do people have to buy a lot of log files to build a web site?” she asks. Ha. Apparently, I mumble a lot when combing through website log files looking for evidence of intrusion.
The one thing I promised myself is that I wouldn’t stop writing even though my focus was going elsewhere. Huh. Promises, promises. And now that I’m busier than ever, I find the drive to write is getting stronger. Weird, that.
But we’ve got eclipses happening right now, so what better time to make a bit of a shift.
Peace in Perfection
I’ve been struck lately with awareness of how much our lives are absolutely perfect at all moments in time. I noticed it by watching how much my kids are passionate about their own individual things, and how much freedom they have to explore those things. My kids are perfect, just like they are. They’re amazing, inspiring, and impassioned.
I wouldn’t change a thing about either of them. Everything is just perfect with them right now. Sure, we have our moments of discord. They argue and fight. They tease each other relentlessly. But from here, as mom, I can see the perfection.
They still have the “have to do” things in their lives, but they also have a lot more time to explore and become impassioned about their pursuits than I ever had when I was younger. And yet, even that was perfect.
My realization of seeing perfection in them snowballed into seeing everything else in my life as… perfect. Just as it is.
The work I’m doing showing up when it did: perfect.
Ending up in Mount Shasta when I did: perfect.
Everything is just… perfect. Sometimes it’s perfectly broken, but it all happens for various reasons, and who am I to judge?
Even when something goes horrendously wrong, who knows what perfection is right on the other side of working through it?
This peace in perfection I am finding right now is not a normal feeling for me. But it also feels like immense grace showed up and just made me realize that everything has always been perfect all along, and everything will continue to be perfect. Even, or maybe especially, if I cannot see it.
It’s not even an “accept the things I cannot change” type of thing. It’s more of a “the things I cannot change are perfect just as they are” type of thing.
That’s unusual for me. Usually I can find exactly what’s not right about something and know what needs to be done to fix it. Or snark about it.
What am I going to do with my snark now?
Expanding into What Is
In finding not only acceptance of what is, but the perfection of what is, it allows a certain level of freedom. It allows the present moment the freedom to expand into whatever it needs to be. Instead of looking for something that does not exist and attempting to make that manifest, I find that I can allow an expansion of what is to happen.
When we can appreciate the most unattractive thing in our life as beautiful just the way it is, we have the tendency to see the beauty in all things. And the unattractive thing starts to show its magic to us. And then, when we can hold those competing observations of beauty and ugly, judgment and acceptance, happiness and sadness, and allow it all to be whatever it is no matter what it is that we think we see, there’s something really magical in that space.
(Have you been there? Have you been sad, angry, mad, and held that competing emotion at the same time? It’s like being in the middle of the yin-yang and something in your heart opens up and you just… get it. If you haven’t experienced that, I highly recommend it, especially when the dominant emotion is begging you to run away with it.)
We’re not here to whitewash our reality into something other than what it is. We’re here to dance in the dust, sing in the rain, and expand the knowledge of our own individual perfection, beauty, and magnificence. It starts by not picking at what doesn’t live up to the made up standards we picked up over the years. It starts by looking at our mistakes as magical opportunities, it starts with letting go of guilt, and it starts with letting go into the magic of the ride we’re on.
It doesn’t mean we become passive bystanders in life. We still take action, but the intent behind our action is what makes the difference. The next “perfect step” in life has a certain feel to it. There’s a “what if…” sensation, a curiosity, a child-like playfulness that comes along. We don’t stop our work, whether it’s our vocation or avocation. We move into it ready to explore what the next moment wants to be.
