Paradox

“Am I still feeling my breath?  Oh shit!  I’ve slipped off into thinking.  This sucks!  Why the hell am I not enlightened already?  I am not good at this.  I should just give it up.  My meditation will never be perfect.  I will never be perfect.  Life will never be perfect!”  Does any of this sound familiar?  This is usually how my meditations go.  Hell!  This is usually how my life goes.  Being a perfectionist sucks!

I’ve written about being a perfectionist before.  Yet, the truth of just how much pain my striving for perfection causes is still not apparent to me.  I live in denial about it.  I blame others and point fingers for what I am doing to myself.  The world is a terrible place for a greedy-non-accepting-fanatical-perfectionist, like me.  I live in a constant reaching for what will never arrive.

There is a conceit to my greed, which obstructs me from overcoming it.  Ironic, my sense of being better than others obstructs me from seeing that I don’t ever feel I am good enough.  What would life be like if I could feel content with my accomplishments, while still striving to become better?  I really don’t know; while it is nice to improve, it is even nicer to see those improvements.

“Oh!  Be careful that is what will lead to conceit.”  I am still working through this paradox.  So, I may not be the best source of information on how to overcome it.  However, I am sure that ignoring our accomplishments will not serve to make us more humble.  If that were the case, I’d be the most humble person on this planet, and I am anything but that.