To hell with New Year’s Resolutions

I woke up in the dark for the first time in several weeks this morning.  At 4:30 really.  It’s lovely that time of day.  Pitch.  Crystalline cold.  Still.  It’s not even time for coffee and kitchen lights twinkling over backyard snow, across alleyways.  No one is awake.  Just bakers and garbage men and my friend, Lori, who opens the YMCA for crazy people who want their heart rates above 120 before six am.  I used to want that.  Not so much anymore.

Now I want eight hours of sleep.  I want to work out in the evening and spend my mornings, once I do get up, well, doing this, or editing photos, or studying, or paying bills, or writing something I wonder if anyone will ever read.  Well, I don’t wonder if anyone will read it.  I know someone will.  I just wonder how I will get thousands and thousands of people to read it, since I’m to the point where it seems best to have thousands, maybe millions of people actually read the good thing I’ve written rather than a few read the masterful thing I’ve crafted.

Excellence, pshaw.

Did I say that?  Let me rephrase.  Paralyzing perfectionism, to hell with you!  You suck.  You are useless.  You stumbling block, you ignacius, pugnacious, insipid, self-defeating, self-righteous pompery!  You don’t serve me at all.  Or anyone else around me for that matter either.

Well, no.  Not quite right.  Paralyzing perfectionism does serve those around me who are also paralyzed by their own fears and trapped by their own human frailties yet unable to face them.  Some think it would be better for them if I clung to the standard of perfectionism.  If I avoided all hope of liberty.  If I listened to the condemning voice of the Law as I consider my actions of the day.  It might be momentarily more comfortable.  Less risky.

It has certainly been more comfortable for me, the demon one knows being better than the demon one doesn’t.  You know the saying.

Our mother likes to quote a verse her father recited:  “Whatever you do, do with all your might.  Things done in halves are never done right.”    She means well.  She really does.  She’d take it as blasphemy knowing I disagree with her application of such a verse.  Never mind it came out of the mouth of a man sorely gripped by addiction and questionable moral proclivity.  We don’t talk about that.  She loved him after all, and by all accounts, he loved his little girl.

And that is my point.  The penchant toward effort and doing things right is not at all the point.  Of life.  Of human worth.  Of human success.  Love is the point.  The truth is the point.  Not telling the truth or finding the truth but being the truth.

Who really wants to have a rude awakening and get real?  That would mean an adjustment of all things, wouldn’t it?  Admitting the old way was not working.  Admitting imperfection.  Admitting flaws in the system, flaws in one’s thinking, flaws in one’s behavior.  It seems to me few people are willing to do this, or know how to do it, or want to do it.

And yet, it is what has improved my life two thousand percent in recent months.  Rude awakening.  Getting real.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am tempted again toward perfectionistic effort, the A+, the stellar performance, the pressure of the standard.  Why, just days ago I was agonizing with insecurity over the merits of my hockey photography.  If I’m asking people to pay for it, after all, I must be certain it is worth paying for.  And everyone knows, excellence is worth paying for.  But love is worth even more.

I’m not opposed to excellence.  I just find its pursuit so very wasteful, so laughable almost when analyzed.

Just think:  for whom am I aspiring to excellence?  For my parents?  A lover?  My children?  For the world at large?  For the good of mankind?  Are any of these served by my performing?  And if so, how are they served?

Can any of us be so impressive that we earn our parents’ delight?  Do I want to be good enough to engender the acceptance of my lover?  Do I want my children to grow up with the same insatiable drive toward an impossible, unreachable intangible?

Is the world better served by my pretense or my humanity?

Imagine if the repetition of my grandfather’s verse were something like:  in everything, pay attention, be 100 % present.  Enjoy life.  Live fully, not half way.  Pour yourself into the thing in front of you as if it matters because in that moment it is the only thing that matters.  Freely experience the goodness of your own lively effort and see where that adventure takes you.  Don’t be afraid to fail; eventually everyone fails if they try anything worthwhile.  Fail big!  Live without regret because you gave of yourself, loved deeply, and lived honestly.

That to me is the essence of doing all things for Christ.  Not that I can perform for God.  Not that I work to impress a truly perfect being.  (Can I ever really do anything worthy of impressing Him, after all?)  Not that I strive and try harder.  Not that I aspire to all sorts of law-abiding and good deeds.  But that I love.  Love IS the more excellent way.  Without it, I am an annoyance.  Love is all there is.  Love is what I was perfectly made to imperfectly do.

So, no New Year’s Resolutions.  No trying harder.  No effort even to love more or love better.  Just a graceful step into the next moment and the next thereafter wherein I am certain I will be invited, time and time again, in everything I do, to LOVE.

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