The Perfect Me

If you asked me if I try to be perfect, I would laugh and say, “Are you out of your mind?  Of course not!  That’s a no-win kind of game!”  And I might appear sincere and believable, because intellectually I genuinely believe that no matter how hard you try, you can’t ever get there to Perfection from here, or anywhere else.

However, from the corner of the mind’s eye, I do notice that more often than not, I try to be perfect.  If not for myself, at least in the eyes of other people.  From this corner, I notice that when the mind is operating habitually, it looks to create an impression, it seeks approval, it wants applause and recognition.  It has a voracious appetite.  It doesn’t just want for me to be regarded positively, but to be held in this place of esteem 24/7 by everyone I’ve met.  Totally.  Globally.

Disney and Dreamworks have at least caught up with the idea that perfectly good characters, even in animation, are boring.  However, when I’m not watching, I find myself reverting to the old, real old, pre-digital Disney characters who were pure in their goodness.  Not consciously, are you kidding?  If I saw these thoughts up front and personal, I’d scare them away by labeling them as sheer stupidity.  That’s why these thoughts hover and lurk in the dark corner.  I realize they are there when I become uncomfortable about any social encounter.  

From the corner of my mind’s eye, I bring this need for approval for a close-up, dead center, 20/20.

Is it true that I need the world’s approval for me to be happy?  The lurky lurks in the corner just fall apart at the question and the space around me clears up and expands.  Considerations about whether, who, when, and how of approval seeking just get deep fried in the fire of the simple question.  When I turn things around and make myself the source of my own FDA stamp of approval, clouds, walls, barriers, and all kinds of “what if” obstacles just disappear.  What miracles await when you catch the unexamined beliefs. 

You can’t get to them frontally, however.  You have to catch them from the corner of the mind.