You don’t have to be perfect... I went to a beautiful wedding the other week. It was small, but perfectly formed - about 60 people joined to celebrate the love of two very wonderful people. It was just the perfect day. I found myself pondering, on my way there, how things have changed for me over the 55 years I’ve been alive. 30 years ago, if heading to a wedding, I would have been dressed to the nines, 50 pounds lighter than I am now (at least!), and worried about how I looked, whether anyone would be impressed with me... Now, in 2019, I was comfortably and simply dressed, middle aged and looking forward to meeting friends old and new, excited to witness a long awaited union. The difference was that it was no longer all about me. I suppose, with age, I have mellowed and grown in confidence. I mused on the fact that my confidence is inversely proportionate to my physical attributes. If that makes sense?! As I’ve grown older I have realised that what I look like is not the important thing. The important thing is who I am inside and, more importantly, what I can give to others, what I can learn from others. I may well be late to the party on this, but bear with me!! I found myself wondering why such store is placed on being the most beautiful, the richest, the best connected, the most famous, the most outwardly perfect? It was a relief to know that I didn’t have to even contemplate whether I would be admired for the way I looked, because the balance of external beauty over internal beauty had shifted. It pains me to share with you how shallow I am!! But it’s true - for me it has always mattered that I looked nice. It’s beginning, more and more, to be about how I connect with other people, how I can make them feel and, as I mentioned, how I can learn and grow. I found myself wondering, why is it that so many of us live life wanting to be the most beautiful, the slimmest, the wealthiest, the most powerful...? Why don’t we try to be the kindest, most interested, most giving, most empathetic, most filled with integrity? In aiming for these goals life shifts from being a quest for surface perfection... into a journey towards excellence. It becomes less about self obsession and far more about being part of a community. The veneer of perfection is a brittle, temporary thing. What I have learned over time, working with clients and just living my life, is that the thing that people really want... need... is to love and be loved. Ultimately, nobody cares if you’re a size 10 or whether you can afford a Chanel handbag. Nobody cares if you drive a Ferrari or holiday in St Moritz. What matters is how we make people feel, how we care, how we listen. It has nothing to do with perfection because perfection is brief, subjective and static. Better to try and fail and grow - with each step, each act of reaching out, and become, over time, a person that makes a difference? We are alive for such a brief amount of time so to make a difference in that time is surely more important than to waste time striving for a perfection that can never be? And when we understand that we don’t have to be perfect, we can stop wasting time worrying about it. We can start spending our time on an alternate way of living... looking outwards to connect and in doing so creating an internal strength that beats any passing fad for external perfection. And surely, that’s far more worthwhile?

Posted by SarahA at 2019-06-12 08:45:20 UTC