Mr. Fix It

One of my all-time favorite greeting cards starts out:

When life gives you lemons...

Then you open the card and read:

Say "#@$% these lemons!" and throw them back in Life's face.

That way Life learns not to mess with you.

What ever happened to making lemonade, you ask? Well, why make lemonade when I know there are sweet, juicy peaches available? Mmm, that's what I crave, so why settle for something else?

And that is my point: one of my biggest weaknesses is accepting my weaknesses.

I don't know how.

If I notice a tiny bulge building up around my middle, then it's time for a run. If I discover something that makes me uncomfortable, I set out to crush that discomfort. If I cross a limiting thought bouncing around inside my skull, I find a replacement and hammer it in place.

One of my all-time favorite compliments centered around this trait. A friend from Search and Rescue told me "You're not afraid of anything, and if you are, you run towards it!"

One of my all-time favorite people had a different take on it, however, when she told me "It's hard for people to connect with you when you don't show any weaknesses."

It's not that I didn't have weaknesses, and I'm certain that several of them showed through quite clearly, but I didn't accept them. I didn't see how they could possibly endear me to anyone. They seemed stupid and repulsive to me, and I tried to break them whenever possible.

If I couldn't do anything about weaknesses, then I'd probably learn a new approach to them, but the thing is, I can! I know how to change. Some changes are quick, some painfully slow. In this sense, I'm an eternal optimist, and I'm afraid that in the process of this perfectionism, my second friend may be right and I may turn more and more people away.

I was vaguely aware of this point, but has grown clearer since I began this blog a couple days ago. I'm all "this is the ultimate way to be" and then I read friends' blogs and notice that most of their very best, most inspiring work centers around weaknesses that they have come to accept. There's a poetry about it, a vulnerability, a warm humanness. People can connect to that and suddenly their lives are better understood and shared and that makes it all okay.

In contrast, I feel like a cold, demanding, inhuman monster. A relatively nice monster, but a demanding one nonetheless.

I recognize some of those words and traits. I remember my father who, whenever I showed him some accomplishment, wanting to celebrate it momentarily, often showed me how I could take it to the next level. Nothing was ever quite good enough. It's not that he wasn't proud of me, as he often said, but that wasn't the message that eventually sank in. By now, of course, our relationship is entirely different and he never says anything to indicate that my performance is sub par (or sub super), but the formative years are long gone.

I don't want to be like that and I think I'm quite good at taking a genuine interest in people's accomplishments. I love when people even try to excel. I don't always push.

So what do I do? I don't demand perfection, but I love excellence. I'm not yet satisfied with myself or my life, though I'm getting quite close.

The answer, of course, is both obvious and inevitable: fix this. Find a better way.

I can do that.