“When we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. In fact, there are no promises of fruition at all. Instead, we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.”
– Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 100

This week may not be all that for folks.  Someone drinks too much.  Someone complains too much.  Someone critiques too much.  Someone holds too little, compliments too little, hugs too little.  Too few tender words.  Too many old aches surfacing.  Too many times of going riiiight back into our familiar family roles we learned as children.  And we feel like crap.  We regret.  We get mired in the complicated web of our constellation of emotions.

Maybe. Maybe we’ll have moments like this.

Maybe we are grieving.  And we wonder how no one we walk by in the busy grocery store notices the the big hole in our chest or hears the screams lodged in our throats.

Maybe.  Maybe we’ll have  moments like this.

Maybe it’ll all go perfect.  Perfect turkey. Perfect timing.  Perfect pictures.  Perfect decorations, conversations, and fun-filled moments.  Maybe.

Many of us want these perfect moments, believing that somehow, they held the key to our happiness.  Intuitively we know that perfection doesn’t = happiness.  But STILL, we get caught in trying to make it all perfect.  Or at least wanting it to be DIFFERENT. Then it’d be perfect.

Well, I’m getting DONE with perfection.  D-O-N-E, I tell you.  I see how this habitual pattern of wanting things to be different than they are — trying to GET so and so to be different, say something different, act a different way — is absolutely EXHAUSTING.  It sucks the energy, joy, and life right from me.

Instead, what is soooo much more nourishing is just to be gentle.  Gentle with my own heart and thoughts and judgments and hopes.  Gentle with this moment and the next….however it unfolds.  Truly what heals, as Pema says, is tenderness.

I’m reminded of Lao Tzu’s words:
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
― Lao Tzu

Soooo…I’m gonna take my husband’s lead and be water, folks. Soft. Yielding. Fluid.

Yielding to “what is”.  Softening judgment.  Softening the desire for perfection.  Fluid with circumstances may arise.  Letting us all be perfectly imperfect.

What is soft is strong.  Ok, so softening!