Right here, right now is perfect

Even as I strive, more and more, to release my perfectionism (yes, I do know how silly and oxymoron-ish that sentence is!), I also allow myself, more and more, to embrace the notion that right here, right now, everything is perfect. Just as it is.

I know these two concepts can seem contradictory. I also know they can both be true. I know they can seem inconsistent and incongruous. Again, I also know they can both be true.

I was with someone dear over the weekend. They were telling me about their perfectionism – that they’re also striving to release. They described the pressure they feel to do everything perfectly. They were furnishing and decorating a new home. It had to be done perfectly. They were throwing a family celebration. It had to be perfect.

Their descriptions made me realize that my perfectionism is, maybe, a bit different. I don’t know that I’m caught in a need to do things perfectly. (Although I do know that people who know me well may argue that point – and perhaps with good reason.) My push for perfectionism seems to more be a compulsion to be perfect, not to do perfect. (Although, again, I fully realize that many people might want to point out to me how off base and incorrect I am with that thought. Or that being and doing perfect are highly correlated…or simply the same thing.)

But even as I acknowledge my need to be perfect and my desire to release that need more and more, I also know that when I remember that everything is perfect just as it is, my need to be perfect automatically eases. Because with an acceptance of “right here, right now is perfect,” there is nothing left to strive for. There is no perfect left to try and be.

As I walked around NYC this past weekend – revisiting old haunts with my kiddies and, most fascinatingly, walking them past the New Yorker hotel, where “it” all happened – I thought about my past and my present. And even as I walked by the New Yorker and memories flashed in my mind (and emotions surged in my heart), I thought about where some of my perfectionism (obviously) came from and how, yet, I’m perfect as I am and right now is perfect as it is…even with the memories flashing and emotions surging. There is no perfect left to try and be.

When I let off the pressure to prove and achieve, there is nothing for me to be other than myself, just as I am. Just as I am right now. When I allow that my present might be perfect, just as it is, a weight falls off my shoulders. A weight I’m so used to carrying that I generally don’t know it’s there…until it falls off my shoulders and I feel unbelievably light.

Right here, right now is perfect. Just as it is. Just as I am.

Perfect.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you!