Learning how to embrace the imperfectness of your life is a form of art we need to learn in order to move closer to peace and acceptance.
Looking around my apartment I see stacked boxes, the inflatable mattress I sleep on, clothes stacked on the floor (no dresser), and a small Ikea table to eat on. This is not how I want my life to be. I’m embarrassed to have friends, family or dates over. I’m afraid they’ll see how I live. I once remarked to an old boyfriend, upon seeing his apartment for the first time, that he didn’t seem very established. It was a comment that stayed with him.
Now, I feel a little bit of karma coming back at me.
My apartment is a metaphor for my current state of affairs. Transitional, messy, undone, not-there-yet, incomplete, scattered and imperfect are words that come to mind.
It’s been like this longer than I anticipated. In choosing to move back to LA I thought I’d have quickly found a better paying job–one with retirement benefits. Instead, I’ve landed a contract-job where I’m basically a mercenary breaking new ground for permanent staff who’ll come after my work’s done. The transient nature of my job and the culmination of failed entrepreneurial endeavors are living evidence that I still haven’t been able to bring the fragmented pieces of my life together.
I wish my life was different than the reality that’s in front of me. I find myself resisting the reality of what is. As a matter of fact, I’m enduring my current situation. To escape my feelings, I spend time thinking about when I’ll have a better job, apartment, more money and a boyfriend.
But resistance, endurance and fantasizing take a lot of emotional energy and rob me of peace.
I was reading an old Richard Rohr email newsletter this morning. In it, he was talking about St. Francis and how he delighted in powerlessness, humility, poverty, simplicity and failure. He says that when you live close to the bottom of things there’s no place left to fall. He adds that holiness and freedom come from embracing what we dismiss, deny and disdain.
Freedom would be a big gift to me. Perhaps freedom (and even holiness) is a more achievable goal than finding a new direction, a better paying job, permanent furniture and a significant other.
But the act of “embracing” is easier said than done.
It’d mean I’d have to practice accepting and being thankful for all that is in my life right now. Even the ways I dismiss it as not good enough, deny my anger about it, and disdain it’s outward appearances.
Francis is calling us to humility. Staying closer to failure, poverty (not just economic, but emotional and spiritual too) and powerlessness, in order to enjoy more freedom, is counter-intuitive to how society operates.
It’s not an easy path, but neither is the path of resistance and endurance.
I still want to search for another job, a different place to live and a boyfriend. Yet, I wonder if you can do those things and embrace less-than perfect current circumstances?
The only perfection I see in the simple, unfinished, powerless reality of my life, is it’s imperfection.
Can we learn to embrace the imperfection and know it is good too?
If you have thoughts on what I’ve shared, please post a comment or send an email. Cheers! Rick
