We all need a little bit of type A in us.
The drive to be better is not automatic in everyone. And, when that competitive drive does hit us, it’s usually to get more of something; success, accolades, money, the win – the easy stuff, call it.
Competition doesn’t seem as though it fits into making the world a better place, at least not from the perspective of Love, peace, understanding and harmony. Unless, maybe, we’re not choosing the correct rival?
As a human being in this world, fallible til your transcendence of this earthly place, you are your best and most relevant comparison. There’s no one else like you, inside and out, so why look anywhere but to you? Why compare to the magazine cover, the hero, the beefcake lifting weights beside you or your neighbour down the street?
The only true gauge of progress is to measure a consistent subject. You versus anyone but you offers nothing more than a barometer of irrelevant output. The one true way to assess your improvement, progress or evolution is against the person you were the day before, the month before or the year before.
The philosophical juxtaposition to that of the beauty of the human being says that imperfection is that which makes you perfect. I mean, flip through any quote-of-the-day desk calendar and I’m sure you’ll come across the one that says, “perfectly imperfect”. True. But, it’s just the beginning.
The beauty of life is that its imperfection allows us to conjure up and strive for perfection, for beauty. It’s never set as to what it should be. It allows for an endless opportunity to do, to think, to act in a way you did not or even realized you could, the day before.
The first marathon training session that you didn’t run nearly as far as you had planned is not to feel bad of yourself, it’s to recognize that past-you is helping you get to a better future-you. When you act in a way that did not show kindness to yourself or your fellow man, it’s not to persecute yourself but to recognize that past-you has shown you a way for future-you to be a more considerate person. When your words have hurt rather than helped, the guilt is not to be held onto to punish yourself, it’s to thank past-you for guiding future-you to act with compassion, calmness and from the heart in the attainment of a better version of one’s self.
As much as a certain competitive nature is needed to find the more that is inside of you, past-you isn’t an adversary of future-you. Past-you is an ally of future-you. And, both need Love for this to work.
The Universe wants you to keep adding to your beauty; it wants you to be an ever-expanding version of you. It requires the self-awareness to identify where you’ve gone astray, self-forgiveness to acknowledge and appreciate the lesson you’ve been shown and self-Love to nurture the evolution of past-you into future-you.
The beauty of imperfection is not how it makes each and every one of us individually perfect. The beauty of imperfection is that you’ll never be perfect but rather that you can always reach further and work harder to be more patient, to be more compassionate, to be more Love – all of which have no limits.
The Universe doesn’t want you to be perfect because then you’d have no reason to keep finding the better the version of you. But, it definitely Loves you just the way you are – any way that you are.
Be more.
Be Love.
