Stop Measuring Yourself Against Your Ideals Of Perfection

Well, it happened.

I woke up early, I make a cup of tea, and did something I usually don't do. 

I lost myself in the Internet.

I lost myself.

There is a girl on the screen. She lives in a tiny apartment in NYC and has such ingenious wit and wisdom to share on living minimally, on simplifying, on living a soulful, sustainable life, with a fully supportive husband. I could relate to a degree, but as I read she had it all together. 

She makes elder-flower spritzers and homemade bread and knows how to gracefully decline house guests. She was beautiful inside and out. Her hair was perfect, her figure trim and healthy and her make up impeccably done. 

She is perfect. Her life is perfect.

I am no stranger to the comparison trap, not in the slightest. It’s a large portion of the reason I regulate my time in front of the screen. I’m prone to thinking everyone has it all figured out except for me, prone to thinking everyone has it all, period.

No one has it all.
I know this, I know this, I know this.
(Why do I not yet believe this?)

But on this quiet morning, as I sit braless with bedhead, it’s easy to see the girl with the elder-flower spritzer in NYC (actually, currently in France – need I say more?!) has it all.

Do you want to know what I did after reading her blog for 45 minutes?

I bought lemons at the grocery. I contemplated new kitchen curtains. I shamed myself for keeping so many tiny shampoo bottles from hotel trips, and then I fully convinced myself I could keep them, because someday another pandemic might hit and this time there might be a shampoo shortage. 

Do you want to know what I did not do?

I did not think.

I did not sit with my feelings of inadequacy long enough to realize they were not feelings of inadequacy at all. They were a recognition of someone else’s small successes, someone else’s adequacies, someone else’s triumphs. Look at her, killing it at this living stuff. She’s soaring! She’s happy!

And in my small mind, I twisted someone else’s happiness to mean there would be none left for me.

A simple scenario:

Girl on the screen has lemons. I like the girl on the screen; I like the way she lives. Do I need lemons to like the way I live, too?

A simple truth:
No.

You don’t either. You don’t need the lemons, the new curtains, the hotel shampoo bottles for the what ifs. But you needn’t shame yourself when you think you do.

It happens to the best of us.

Anyway, I emailed her, the elder-flower girl.

Hello!

This is wildly random, but I’m sending you an officially official fan letter to applaud you on the life you’re leading. I know that sounds strange, and I know applause is likely not what you’re after, but hey – we all need a blue ribbon moment every now and then, yes?

I know the life you lead is not without challenges, and I’m so impressed by your self-control, your wisdom, your grace. Thank you for sharing your life with the rest of us.

We’re learning from you, and growing with you, and that’s no small thing.

And just like that, with a hit of the Send button, my own visions of perceived inadequacy vanished and, in its place, a deep respect for another human arrived.

I read once that, of all the feelings we must listen to, jealousy is one of the most important. Jealousy reveals what it is we want. 

Sit with it.
Learn from it.
Write about it.
Thank it.
Hit Send.