Perfection Is Most Elusive

Social perfection is most elusive to me.

I know better than to pursue it.  And yet I try and try again eventually slapping my forehead remembering “oh right, I’m imperfectly perfect“!  For a while I relax in this space, temporarily eluding my own ego pursuing absolute perfection.   When I notice The Perfectionist showing up more frequently, it’s time for visualization.  I decide to send my perfectionist tendencies away to Paris because it’s nice there.  I imagine The Perfectionist in me as a cute smiley face wearing a french beret, navy and white striped t-shirt with a backpack slung over its shoulder.  Its arm is sticking out of the bus window, excitedly waving goodbye as the bus drives off to Paris.  See you later Perfectionist!   Visualization works really well as I practice paying attention to my thoughts.

Now that The Perfectionist is away I can get back to realizing what a wonderful human being I am.

But there’s the inevitable all too common event that appears. It’s the dreaded party.  I don’t enjoy parties.

I know that makes me sound like a loser.  I’m not.  They’re just not my thing.  They are work.  Of course being perfect would come in handy when attending parties but perfection doesn’t exist.  Once again I’m face to face with desiring what eludes me.  In this case, the party is a low key neighborhood happy hour.  It’s really no big deal.  So, instead of my usual introvert behavior standing at the appetizer table and eating my way through the party, I attempt conversation.  It’s just never been my strong suit.

In both my career and personal life, I dreaded “the party”.  

This feeling included my parent’s parties, family and friend’s parties.  Especially wedding receptions (why are they so long?), showers (double ugh because of boredom and faking having fun), happy hours (unhappy because usually in a noisy restaurant bar), the annual office holiday party (do NOT drink), and networking events (similar to the shower category).  However, in this party’s case, I like my new neighborhood and I decide to make a good effort during our casual, mostly not scary, outdoor happy hour.

The later it gets the more I literally throw myself into conversations.  I’m giving it my all.  It’s election season so the best analogy is that I came off as though I was running for office and kinda self-absorbed.  No, really.  In some cases, it seemed I was nominating my husband for office.  Immediately afterward The Perfectionist caught the next bus back and I revisited those happy hour conversations for days.  I want to run after those who witnessed my vulnerabilities translating themselves to my less than perfect obnoxious? behavior and words.  “That’s not usually me” I want to tell them.  But imagined conversations are very dissatisfying because they aren’t real.

My dissection of the evening, of now epic proportions, is just silly.

It begins to take up my meditation time, makes an appearance while I walk in the woods, while I’m on a bike in my spinning class, driving in my car, and as I’m writing this blog post.  After many days, I’m too worn out to have regrets or embarrassment any longer.  I land somewhere between “bite me” and “whateverrrr”.

I remind myself who I am, of my uniqueness, quirkiness, my healthy introversion, and other very human personality traits.  The good parts actually.  I guess perfection is elusive for a good reason.

When we experience that perfection is most elusive perhaps it’s to get us to see that we’re wonderful as we are.  Sure there’s always room for improvement in some areas.  But for the most part, we’re lovely human beings that mean well and are doing our best.  Let’s give ourselves and each other a pass at trying to be different and just accept who we are.

It’s not a crime to be an introvert and besides, that’s my comfort zone.

This blog post was in response to the WordPress word prompt of the day:  Elusive