My friend just shared this amazing, miraculous thing with me. She shared how she showed up in a difficult situation with kindness, patience, compassion and mercy for herself and the people she was interacting with, when a year ago, that’s not how she would have shown up if the same situation had presented itself. I am so blessed to hear stories like this all the time. It’s the kind of story you hear when you are on a healing journey with others.
I was so excited for her, I asked her “Can you see how you’re doing a good job?”
There was a long pause before she responded with what she could see. She couldn’t see that she’d done a good job. It sounded like she could see her growing edges, i.e. where she could improve, which is always good to see. Did she see where she’d changed, done something different and made progress? It didn’t sound like it.
I do this too. I have half a lifetime training in examining my flaws and areas that need improvement. There’s nothing wrong with that when it’s balanced out with being able to see where I’ve improved, where I’ve made progress in my life and also can celebrate and appreciate it. Unfortunately, for so long that was a growing edge I couldn’t see. I thought celebrating my personal wins was akin to arrogance and developing unhealthy pride. I thought by focusing on my personal flaws I was keeping myself in reality, that I was really some horrible person. If I kept my eye on that, then I could maybe address the problem somehow, someday and find the cure to stop being a horrible person.
I’m learning that the reality is, by focusing on only my growing edges, creates a false fantasy that I’m only made up of my own worst personality traits and life mistakes. Seeing myself at my worst, is as big a fantasy as seeing myself at only my best moments and life successes. I’m human, perfectly imperfect, and like all my perfectly imperfect brothers and sisters in the world, I’m somewhere in the range of being “good” and “bad”.
To see who I really am, I have to see my points of success, not just my points of failures. I’m trained to see minutiae points of failures: I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly there, I wished I’d used different words then, I interrupted that person while they were talking here. To counter it, I have to see my points of successes with equal amount of detail. To me, that means seeing my points of progress, not just those points I would consider success, because sometimes I defined the word success as something too big.
Seeing my points of progress
Helps me stay in reality of who I am and not in the fantasy of how terrible I must be.
Sometimes, without realizing it, I think my success point is when a goal is met. To overcome that, I look for points of progress. Hey look! I said that just the way I would have wanted! I was kind here, when a month ago, I wouldn’t have been kind here. I spoke up when it was hard. Progress. These are all successes but since it's harder for me to identify, I’ll use the word progress. Where do I see progress?
By seeing my points of progress, I have a much better view of myself. I see myself as a work in progress, rather than a bad person that needs fixing. I have more patience, love, pride and compassion for myself. I can see that I’m worthy of those things.
Afterall, how do you make a painting? One brush stroke at a time. A painting doesn’t just appear in front of you. It’s made of lots of individual strokes. Life is full of metaphors like this. How do you complete a journey? One step at a time. In our case with cars and planes, maybe it’s better to say by traveling one mile at a time. And it’s not like you just take one journey. There’s the return journey and then all the other places you want to go visit.
How do you make a painting?
One brushstroke at a time.
“Progress, not perfection” is a powerful slogan in my life. It reminds me that change happens in many little steps, not one big giant leap. It reminds me that it requires patience and steady perseverance. I need to be okay that I can’t ever reach a goal of perfection because humans just aren’t built to be perfect. If we were, we would never experience things like forgiveness or mercy. There are beautiful and subtle gifts in our existence as imperfect beings.
After my friend finished answering my question, I rephrased it. “I wonder, since you weren’t perfect, did you see where you responded with compassion, patience, understanding and kindness, instead of how you would have responded to this situation a year ago? Do you see your own progress, instead of looking for the perfection?” Of course, she realized what I was asking and saying, saw how she’d responded and laughed. Then she said yes, she could see where she did a good job.
Having friends on a healing journey with you is another amazing and subtle gift of being imperfect. We’re not alone in our imperfection.
May we all see how we are not alone in our life journey. May we find companions that remind us to be kind to ourselves, support us in resting when we need it, and encourage us to take the next step when we need to. Ameen.
Love and Light,
Mariam-Saba
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