TheBanyanTree: Just posted to my blog

[Monique Colver]

http://open.salon.com/blog/moniquec/2010/01/12/for_people_named____________

Let's take a moment here to focus on something really important, and I don't
mean cake. I like cake. Cake is good, though I never eat more than a few
bites at once. It's just too much, all at once.

This is for my friend, ________. _________ is a fine person and a wonderful
friend, but she's far too hard on herself. I, of course, am not hard on
myself at all. I only expect that I shall be all things to all people while
maintaining my mercurial work load and my sanity. In addition, I shall save
anyone who needs saving, and I shall, while working as an accountant, create
a body of written work that I won't be ashamed of.

I will not end sentences with prepositions.

I will pay the proper amount of attention to my friends and family and, when
needed, I will be there, helpful and attentive to their needs.

If I don't feel lovable, it's obviously because I'm missing something that
would make me lovable. I must need an overhaul. Maybe I need to do more?
Maybe I should be more? Maybe there's just something I'm missing, something
internal that prevents me from doing all the things I should be doing? I can
see everyone else doing things, and yet here I am, just being me, and it
can't possibly be enough, can it?

Right. Get over myself, why don't I? I can point out a million reasons why
I'm not worthy of ________ (fill in the blank with whatever you'd like). I
can elaborate at length and with no intention of malice on why I'm not "good
enough," and I have, on more than one occasion, but how useful is that? It's
actually rather harmful, and has me focusing on all the wrong things, like
the absence of cake instead of the cake.

Or I could believe what I'm going to tell ________, which is this: You are
special because you're you. We are all of us flawed, in some way, and we are
all of us perfect, in some way. Every one of us. You too, because you're one
of us. We each come with our own special package of human stuff that makes
us, all at once, lovable and fragile and incredibly strong. It's inherent in
who we are.

You, and I, need to focus on what we can do, not on what we can't, and on
what makes us happy and brings us joy, because without it we're just
treading water. We're still special and perfect and flawed, but if we keep
looking for what brings us joy we can move beyond treading water and get
closer to where we want to be. Just like I can't eat all the cake, you can't
look at just the things that are wrong as a whole. Look at a crumb or two,
if you want, and see if there's anything you want to do with them. If so, do
it, and if not, throw them away.

I'm  mixing my metaphors, so be advised that you should never, in real life,
mix cake and water. It just makes the cake soggy and doesn't do much for the
water either.

This may not apply to ________ at all. She may not see anything that
resembles her here. If not, look harder, ________. We're in this together.
We rock.


-- 
Monique Colver