This tea bag is so timely.
I’ve become really aware of the perfectionist in all of us which basically makes our life equal parts exacting, stressful, ambitious, hellish, stimulating, exhausting, exciting and unhappy. I call it “The Perfectionist Epiphany” and I had it last Friday.
To start, my sister called first thing and whispered: “She rolled off the bed when I wasn’t watching her for two seconds. She was bawling but then she stopped and was happy. It was SO BAD”. I was like “It’s okay!! It’s a proven fact that babies bounce like basketballs- Dr Rick (my kinesiologist) said. It’s another proven fact that every parent has dropped their kid at some point- they’re wriggly worms and it happens!” My sister heard me but I’m pretty sure she didn’t feel me, and when I saw her later that day, the frustration of letting herself and her baby down was still pretty raw. If only she and all the other parents out there knew how frigging awesome a job they’re doing every single day.
My gorgeous cake extraordinaire friend gifted us with a whole bunch of sponge tops which were left over after she had baked a huge, multi-tiered wedding cake for our mutual friend. By herself. In her home. With something like three baking tins and home appliances. The wedding was happening on Saturday and she’d slaved over this masterpiece, little by little, step by step, since Monday. It was her first ever wedding cake– built to feed 100 people. Talk about tackling the nigh impossible:
“Did you take a picture?” I asked (hey man, I’m Asian– pre-requisite!).
She shook her head: “I’m not happy with the icing. I’m so disappointed with it”. She’d gone to bed at 2 am and to make things worse, with all that baking fatigue pulsing through her veins, on Friday morning, she’d slipped on an oil slick and landed heavily on her side- elbow scraped, jacket torn, all those yummy sponge tops towed away thoughtfully for all of us, in her little sling bag. We all gave her a hug: “You did your best. They will LOVE it”. Of course, come Monday, we saw a picture of it and it was jaw-droppingly marvellous: “It’s such an ethereal cake!!”, I exclaimed. What an amazing achievement.
Just two examples, but can’t you see, you clouds of fabulous: it’s so easy for us to support others and weirdly, so difficult for us to cut ourselves some slack. From now on, we say: “You did your best, you were courageous—be proud of yourself for giving it a go”. If we couldn’t have known any better in that moment, then we should never berate ourselves for falling short. It’s all about the YAY for progress, effort, endeavour and life lessons 🙂
