It may not be confession time but I will say it anyway. I spent the better part of the four decades on this planet in a human body being addicted to berating myself for not being perfect. Maybe I was getting advanced training in ‘how not to treat yourself’ or I was just a slow learner. Regardless, I got it in the end. One day, it dawned on me that being intolerant of one’s mistakes and focusing on them in exclusion of the positives is no more than self-abuse. That was not how I wanted to relate to myself anymore.
A few days after this firm decision, I was talking to a friend of mine about the idea of wanting to be powerful enough to give myself the freedom to make mistakes. It seemed like such a high goal. Insightfully, he asked, “Who did you promise that you would be perfect? God?” Ha! I laughed. We went onto another topic but that comment popped in my head while I was cooking dinner, about four hours after the conversation was over.
