“Our thoughts are the divine paintbrush we use to paint a picture of how we observe and relate to this reality we call life.” Sydney Banks
At our best (which we are not always) we see the innate perfection in all participants of our programmes, clients and collaborators: we don’t see anyone as lacking, broken, or not capable. People pick up on that, it does something to the energy and brings forth a sense of possibility.
This week we’ve had the paintbrush out, transforming a white wall into Origami Clover (that’s green). Now, I pride myself on my handiwork in decorating, with a good few walls painted over the years. This pride comes however with expectation — and my expectation is of a perfect finish — nothing less than professional. It so happened on this occasion though that the finish was far from perfect — removing the masking tape revealed wonky edges and green splodges on the neighbouring white walls and ceiling at regular intervals. After the effort put into the expectation of perfect I was upset by this, I very quickly created a reality in which I was a failure who should have known better with an exhausting future of repeating the job, or worse, having to paint the whole of the rest of the room in order to fix the faults on one wall’s edges.
Then, as quickly as my upset arose, a new thought occurred, and with it a new reality.
“What if it doesn’t have to be perfect? I’m doing my best and my best isn’t perfect, and maybe that’s OK.”
This helped a lot, the upset eased.
What I realised here is that I had painted a picture in my mind of how the finished wall should look, and had spent much of the job anticipating the perfect outcome. This outcome felt important, like it meant something about my value as a person, and so when the result was far from perfect, I felt that I was far from perfect. As well as realising the paintwork didn’t need to be perfect, even in our (soon to be born) daughter’s nursery, I saw something else.
I saw that I want our daughter to know that she is perfect, just as she is, in every moment. Nothing she can do or say will change that fact — her true nature is never broken, in need of fixing or lacking. We know that if she knows that, really knows that, she will live in a certainty that she has everything she needs and nothing to prove. This knowing will do wonders for her navigating, with grace, the painting of the reality that she will call life.
And so the wonky wall is staying, and we will sit and nurse our daughter with a reminder that she is always enough, perfection is overrated, and innate.
