Making peace with the imperfect
12/16/2009

My second week of “transformative change” practice closed on Monday and a blog should have followed.  This is it, a few days late, due to grant deadlines and other commitments.

That—the reality of having to live with broken commitments—seems to be this week’s lesson.  My ability to honor my practice commitments totally fell apart this week, although my intention to honor them remained as high as on Day One.

If that sounds like a contradiction, I suppose it is.  It went like this:  by the end of the first week I realized that a lot of the “extra” things I do in a week, which I was forced to let go of in order to honor my commitment to “27 days of transformative change,” are actually important to me.  They might not help to effect change in the larger world, but they help to nurture me and the people important to me.  I’m talking about activities like writing to my 95-year-old grandmother; maintaining a connection with my two- and six-year-old niece and nephews; taking care of my home; cooking for my husband; baking for the holidays; and exercising.  Nothing earth-shaking, but these things had to be pushed aside in order to honor my new practice commitments. 

So morning would come and I wouldn’t get out of bed early enough to meditate before coffee and breakfast, so I’d meditate afterwards.  Then there were clients to respond to and the dog to walk, and now it was time to meditate again.  But the day was in full swing and there were half a dozen other things I needed to attend to, so I would mentally tell myself and the meditation cushion, “I’m there with you in spirit.  In my mind I’m meditating,” even though in physical reality I was talking on the phone, or making lunch, or responding to an email.  And that’s what would happen all day.  I remembered my intention to meditate; to work on my manuscript; to devote an hour/day to activism; but I didn’t always get to it. 

Meanwhile, I missed not having written my grandmother, or visited my nephew Oscar, or written to my niece and nephews in Yuma.  Those activities might not save the world, but they definitely nurture a few relationships.

So I made it all OK.

That’s right.  I did the best I could to honor my transformative change commitments, keep my clients and husband happy and myself healthy, and I let that be good enough.  If the balance fell to one side on Monday, I tried to let it fall to the other on Tuesday.  The first three days of the week, I might have to take care of my clients; the last two days of the week I’d take care of myself and the world.  I never had a perfect day, but I didn’t make it worse by berating myself. 

Because I realized that all the things I’m trying to do are good.  What’s the point of making myself wrong if I can’t get to all of them in each 24-hour period?  It’s not as if I didn’t meditate because I was pulling the wings off of butterflies.  I might not have meditated because I was trying to work on my novel, or see my nephew, or bake Christmas cookies, or protest the misuse of American resources in pursuit of war. 

I realized that’s a pretty nice thing to realize about my life: that all of the many tasks and obligations and activities in it are worthwhile, are mine, are intentional; I choose them.

There’s been one big change, or improvement, though.  The one hour a week I spend on Fridays, standing on a street corner in downtown Santa Barbara to protest the war in Afghanistan makes up for a dozen other possible shortcomings in a week.  When I’ve done that—when I’ve stood in a meditative space on a busy street corner, bearing a sign that says simply, “The war in Afghanistan is wrong—morally, financially, and strategically,” I feel I’ve made a meaningful expression of my values.  I’ve done something to effect change in the larger world I will leave for my children and my niece and nephews.  That one hour is enough to mentally compensate me for days when perhaps I didn’t write my Congresswoman, or post a petition to Facebook, or make stunning headway on my novel.  That one hour helps me feel as if I’m honoring all my other commitments.

So maybe that’s a hint that will be useful for others.  If you can find one thing to do—daily, weekly, or monthly—that makes all the other compromises that life requires acceptable, then do that one thing and be happy.  Sure, in a perfect world you might do more.  Even in a less than perfect world you may yet to do a whole lot more.  But for now, just that one thing might be enough.

And so it is.