“It takes more courage to be imperfect than to be perfect.”

One of my professors stated this during my first year of my Masters program. The very idea of it slapped me across the face and left an impression that I carry with me today.

As many of my fellow Type-A personalities will acknowledge, this is a difficult concept to wrap our mind around. Embrace our imperfections? You mean the very characteristics that make us human? ....What? I think my brain maybe short-circuiting.

As children, we were not under the constraints of society’s dictations of “proper” and “perfect” and “acceptable” behavior. We threw tantrums, we said and asked what was on our minds, we honored our imaginations and played freely. As we started daycare and school, we looked to our authority figures and our friends (who were influenced by their authority figures… see my brilliant blog about this here) on how to behave. We created schemas and categories about the world, what it entails, how we fit in it, and how we prove we are good enough to stay noticed and important.

Overtime, we’ve silenced parts of ourselves that society has continuously told us is not acceptable. We must maintain control by presenting the perfect parts of ourselves. And then become our own worst enemy when our imperfections, our human essence, slip through the bars that imprison these beautiful, and essential, parts of ourselves.

As a result, we are closed off to who we really are. We are closed off to the parts that make us human, the parts that, if honored, would make us feel whole.

We simply cannot live a whole life when the parts of our whole are divided.

Which parts of yourself are you closed off to? Do you apologize for crying because you believe it is a sign of weakness? Are you in a creative rut? Do you miss dancing? Do you need to feel in control all the time? Is it difficult for you to let go of items? Is cleaning excessively essential to relieving your anxiety? What are you holding on to so tightly? What might happen if you actually let it go?  

Ultimately, I sincerely hope can stop interpreting our humanity for weakness. This idea of perfection keeps us wounded.

I would like to encourage everyone, even myself, to increase our awareness of these parts of ourselves that we are unsure of. It is in this place, the place of discomfort, where learning and growth takes place.