Outside Perfection
Perfection is over rated. Perfection is something that sits on the shelf with the dinnerware you got as a wedding gift but never use. We can see it, we can feel it, but we only take it out on special occasions when we want to impress other people. But we don’t need to save perfection for anything. Lets throw it out. Lets take perfection and shatter it on the floor, watching each letter fall apart and disappear.
Lets move away from our views of perfection. Lets move away from the ways that we compare and contrast ourselves and our worth. Because heres the thing, we are perfect. Each and everyone of us is our own perfect version of ourselves. We get to stand tall and confident in the person we are and the person we are becoming. No one can take that away from us, except ourselves. So search deep for the person you want to be, search for the qualities that you bring to the table that make you extra special. Even the things that might not seem special can be the highlights of the people around you.
Sometimes we need to move around in the world to find out who we really want to be. Sometimes we need to embrace the parts that we don’t love to truly find the person we are.
Perfection is something we strive for but always seem to come up short. Our thoughts revolve around being too much of certain things and not enough of other things. But we are fucking perfect. We are perfect because only you can be you and you get to decide what person that is.
As I sat down to write this, my thoughts started out with movement and training. I have found that most things in training carry a perfect parallel to life. The other weekend, I was doing a park workout in the Seattle area. The local boys were killing it with their workouts. They were coaching, and encouraging. They were challenging and experimenting. They were a mix of ages and body styles. As I finished my workout, I pulled out my headphones and observed their movements. I watched them fuck around with the parallel bars and the chin up bars. I saw them use the balance beam for crazy push up variations. They had little care about the proper technique. They had little care about certifications and gym equipment. They were there to push their limits, get stronger and try things that they never knew even existed. They move outside of perfection and in the process they get stronger and closer to perfect form than I could get sticking with it.
Just like with training, I believe that we need to experiment with reaching beyond our abilities, being uncomfortable and trying things we don’t know if we will succeed at. Being a perfect person is only there if you are looking at someone else for your mirror. Don’t live in a world that feels unachievable. Don’t live in a world that doesn’t boost you up and bring you to the next level. Pick your peers as you would pick your training partners. Pick people who are going to fuel you and encourage you as you struggle to find your space.
So often, we look at what we have and what we want and we usually fall short of those two. And somewhere in-between we miss out on who we truly are and the perfection in just being ourselves. We give ourselves a hard time for the few pounds we put on. We give ourselves a hard time for the argument we got in when we knew we were wrong. We give ourselves a hard time for wasting a day doing nothing. But we don’t spend time celebrating our success.
It’s time to put away the ideas of what perfection looks like. We need to embrace ourselves and the moment we are living in. These times are not easy. These moments bring about a lot of uncertainty and insecurities. But we are going to be the best version of ourselves and it’s about time we start looking outside of what we think is perfection. Train to just be you. And allow each struggle to be a piece of what makes you the best most perfect person there is.