Thank goodness that we are all human and not so perfect
AS ALEXANDER Pope famously said: “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” I remembered this quotation the other day, as it’s one my Mum used a lot when we were growing up. I used to interpret it that we will often get things wrong and so will other people, and forgiveness and understanding of this, brings peace of mind, and the ability to move on.
However, over the last few weeks I have seen our humanness in new depth and have been inspired to be even more curious about what it means to be human. I remember when I first came to the understanding of how we work; I would watch, I admit, with a degree of judgment teachers who shared what they didn’t yet understand, their vulnerabilities, times when they had become insecure, fearful, frustrated, stressed and my own intellect would remark, in my own mind, “should they not know how not to be like this?”
I can see now how my own idea of being a perfect human was clouding my own ability to see what being human really was. It is something that has been a challenge to me throughout my life, and over the past few weeks, I have been drawn to revisit my idea of perfectionism and it’s probably something that I will revisit many times again. Over the past few weeks, between catching up after an extended break over the holidays, being busy with clients, fighting various bugs and lack of sleep, I felt completely overstretched. I have felt tired, grumpy, hormonal, irritable and stressed. I’ve made mistakes I wouldn’t normally make, missed deadlines, and been an all-round bear with a sore head. All I really wanted to do was retreat into a cave and sleep until spring.
In my mind, my life felt more difficult and hard, I felt unsupported and overwhelmed with what I had to do. Then after one particular falling out with someone very dear to me, I found myself saying those crushing words: “I should know better. I shouldn’t be like this!” Thankfully, the one I said it to had far more wisdom than I in that moment, and bundled me off for a well-needed rest and took no notice of what I had said.
As I awoke from an epic nap, I no longer felt the way I had, yet nothing in my external world had changed. The only thing that had changed was my state of mind. It had changed so considerably that I was able to stop and see clearly what my own mind was creating, all the ‘I need to do’, ‘I have to do’ and the myriad of consequences that I convinced myself would flow from potential inaction and I simply let all of that go.
We so often expect not to be like this, not to get gripped by our thinking, so sucked in that it seems that it is the only reality on the table.
However, what I realised was what it means to be human, the vast and colourful array of thoughts, feelings, moods and experiences. When we start to understand that these fluctuations are part of the deal, that our states of mind are meant to be varied, and have no more meaning than that, then we can forgive ourselves more when we momentarily think that we have erred and continue enjoying our amazing existence.
andreamorrison.co.uk