Dear Human:
You’ve got it all wrong.
You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.
This is where you came from and where you’ll return.
You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty Love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Love infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up.
Often.
You didn’t come here to be perfect, you already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human.
Flawed and fabulous.
And rising again into remembering.
But unconditional love?
Stop telling that story.
Love in truth doesn’t need any adjectives.
It doesn’t require modifiers.
It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.
It only asks you to show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal
and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.Its enough.
It’s Plenty.― Courtney A. Walsh
I love this beautiful reminder above to be gentle and loving with ourselves. So many of us arrive at meditation practice with a subtle hope that mindfulness will help us become “better” at something – calmer, more patient, more focused, more spiritual, more healed.
And of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to grow. But sometimes the desire to improve ourselves becomes another form of striving — another way we quietly tell ourselves, I am not okay as I am. I am not enough.
We spend so much of our lives trying to get somewhere. Trying to become someone. Trying to fix the parts of ourselves we think are too messy, too emotional, too sensitive, too tired, too much or not enough.
And beneath all of that effort, there is exhaustion. A tiredness that comes not only from doing too much, but from constantly measuring ourselves against some imagined version of who we think we should be.
But mindfulness invites us into a different relationship with ourselves. Not one of self-improvement, but of self-love. In the Buddhist tradition, suffering often arises from craving and resistance — from wanting this moment to be different than it is, or wanting ourselves to be different than we are. We suffer when we cling to an idea of who we think we should be, and reject the person who is actually here.
The practice is not to perfect ourselves. The practice is to meet ourselves as we are. To turn toward ourselves, as we are, with tenderness and grace. To embrace the imperfection and messiness – all of it. To befriend it all – not only the polished, generous, wise, composed parts of ourselves, but also the anxious, grieving, irritated, uncertain, imperfectly human parts.
Because the goal is not to become someone else. The invitation is to open to the life that is already here. The imperfectly wonderful you. The one who is tired from trying so hard. The one who longs to rest. To be. The one who has been doing the best they can. The one who does not need to earn love, or belonging, or permission to be here.
So perhaps today, instead of asking – How can I improve myself? We can ask something gentler – Can I stop abandoning myself in the name of becoming better? Can I meet this moment, and this body, and this heart, with kindness and love, just as I am?
Because sometimes the most healing thing we can do is stop trying so hard to become someone else — and remember that we already are exactly who we are meant to be and love ourselves fully just as we are.
❤️,
Cheryl
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