Let’s sit down together across a table in a secluded coffee shop for a minute. I’m dressed in a black coat with a red plaid scarf on, sipping slowly at my steaming London Fog with just a hint of local honey in it. We haven’t talked in a long time, not like this, not in a place where time and space don’t exist. We can’t hold hands. We can’t see each other’s eyes. We can’t see how each other react. And I have something I need to tell you, something vitally important. Something pivotal to either of us surviving outside of this little café at the edge of the universe:
We need to talk about it being okay to fail. About how letting go of being perfect is the only way to save yourself. About how life lessons are gained quicker when you suck at something and have to take that in. We need to accept that we’re human – finally – we need to accept that we are human.
It is really easy for me to sit here and tell you that it’s totally okay to let yourself not be perfect. I’m not you. I don’t fully understand how that impacts you or how your past dictates what that looks like. What I suppose I should say is that regardless of that…regardless of everything else…I would be willing to bet money that you have learned more in the moments where things did not go the way you planned than in the moments where they did.
Right now, all over the place, people are suffering. People are dying. People are becoming depressed, pushing themselves harder than they’ve ever pushed themselves, and we’re coming face to face with the consequences of decades of social training telling us that stopping any of that…not being perfect…not having every T crossed…makes us failures.
And so what?
So what if something doesn’t go the way we want it to? So what if we have many twists and turns in the way? So what if we fall? So what if we have to make calculated decisions to actually put ourselves first instead of trying to stop the world from burning? We can’t stop the world from burning. We have to stop OUR worlds from burning.
And my friend….even here in our little cafe on the edge of nowhere….the world is burning. The universe is burning. Everything we know about ourselves is coming to the surface and we have a golden opportunity to look at it for what it is: a total shitshow. A shitshow that we can’t escape, except maybe here in our minds where we drift off to happy places with our favorite people until we actually can again.
Let go. Do what you have to do, but rest. Rest. Rest. And breathe.
We’ll never be the same. And maybe, like every other time we’ve failed to accomplish something, we’ll know better how to care for ourselves and the situations we’re in along the way.
