"All of us are heaven sent, there was never meant to be only one."

The problem with me? Take your pick.

I'm a strange megalomaniac with an inferiority complex.
I think I'm the worst, but it kills me not to be the best. I'm the world's least successful perfectionist.

So what I do is I try to plan ahead and control my present by preparing for the future. In high school it seemed viable: service the future and you’ll have a good life. But one day it dawns on you, isn’t this life yet? Why make the present lousy for yourself just because it may help you be more comfortable in the future? A popular Zen gong I saw a few times when I was in Japan said something that struck me:

“Birth and Death is a grave event;
How transient is life!
Every minute is to be grasped.
Time waits for nobody.”

I don’t think there’s any divine report card coming to us at the end of this life, when you’re done all that’s left is your memories and the lives of the people you’ve touched. If St. Peter is waiting for me at the “pearly gates” after I die, I think he’ll ask me something along the lines of “how much did you love people when you were on Earth?” If there were any eternal judgment at all, the single criterion not too trivial for such a thing would be the amount of love you gave during your tenure as a human being.

St. Peter wouldn’t dare remind me of the time I got hopelessly lost on Valentines Day in the rain trying to find the restaurant while Andrea got carsick in the passenger seat and almost had me pull over so she could throw up. And if that sort of thing holds any clout up next to the years of devoted love I’ve given to countless people over the short period I’ve been alive thus far, then I don’t want to be in heaven’s stupid little club anyway.

My favorite living person, Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

Life is so
short
precious
beautiful
fuckin’ amazing
beautiful
devastating
so devastatingly beautiful that I can not go another minute letting fear of failure keep me from doing the things I truly desire to do. Fear of pain-- hell, fear of death: these things seem so minute.

Hindsight is 20/20.
Ajhan Chah said, “If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.”

Perfectionism may be good and well for some people, but I believe now that it’s keeping me from my full potential. I kiss perfectionism a not so fond goodbye, and now on romantic evenings of self, I’ll go salsa dancing with my own confusion.