Looking for the Profound

My name is Kellie and I am afflicted with the worst kind of perfectionism. It's just my personality, no big deal, just my very fundamental make-up, so it should only take a lobotomy to solve. Sheesh. But that's the thing. I'm ready to move on from this particular life challenge. A lobotomy is not sounding so bad right now. I'm halfway through my life and I'm getting impatient to see some RESULTS for crying out loud. Or figure out how to just be this way and do what I need to do and stop doing the things I want to stop doing. Sometimes, among the folks I know well, I feel so undisciplined, so lame, frankly.  About important things. One could say it's my choice about whether to feel lame or not, and everyone has their challenges and all that, but seeing others succeed at specific things I feel like I'm failing at (or maybe not failing at, but just dog-padding around at) is hard. It's actually really hard. It makes me want to quit trying as simultaneously out of the other side of my brain comes a mental scream of frustration about wanting to change.

But see,  with the desire to change comes the looming problem of that perfectionism.

Because It Is Not the kind that spurs me on to ambition and greatness, no. I have the kind that paralyzes and weighs me down. I see how I want things to be and then see just as clearly the fact that such a scene will never materialize the way I imagine it and so I stay stuck in the moment, staring, and eventually the vision fades from my view and I go back to my book.

All her life has she looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never her mind on where she was. Hmm? What she was doing. She is reckless. 

Holy Cow. I'm quoting Yoda.

There is no try. There is only Do. 

Or Do NOT. 

That's how I feel sometimes. Guess which one I pick too much of the time?

Fortunately there are other sources of answers.

Today as part of my Sabbath worship, I was focusing on and praying about trying to get better at this perfectionism thing, to be able to move smoothly from thinking about a project to planning it to finishing it, instead of just dreaming about it or worse, jumping in half-cocked and recklessly starting without thinking it through, Skywalker-style. Like poor Luke, those seem to be my two settings. Stuck or Careening. Not the two best buttons to have. Smooth Forward Motion sounds better, but I don't seem to have that one on my dashboard.

Because my Heavenly Father loves me, and because I do occasionally remember that Yoda is a muppet,  some real insight came, as it usually does. It came from the mind and heart of a good friend. That was cool. In a very immediate and specific way, which was even cooler. So often prayers are answered through other people. Along with the insight came some peace. Peace that I'm probably only a maniac in my own mind. That if my maniac does show on the outside, apparently I've been blessed with friends who forgive me and love me anyway.  That it actually might take another 45 years, darn it, but that's okay. That my me-ness has its advantages. That at least I understand all the other folks who feel lame, right? Here is your shoulder to cry on, oh lame-feeling friend. I totally get you.

Come and let's put our arms around each other and cry and laugh and then get on with it. The trying. The never giving up. The remembering that an inner Skywalker is not so bad, in her way.

Oh, and reading this. Maybe every 10 minutes or so until it sinks in.