your perfect life

Sometimes I might come to your house and take a look around at your perfect life and feel some despair. I might see your strong husband working on a project with an ax or a hammer. I might see your sweet children playing without arguing. I might see your notes for your next vacation pinned to the bulletin board, the wholesome meal that cooked on the stove all day, the knitting you did in your free time. I might glance at your wall calendar and see play dates and concerts and trips to the museum. I might see the sunshine sprinkled on the clean kitchen floor, your well fed dog sleeping on the rug, your grocery list on the counter, and your flawlessly lined up home school binders, and I might think that all is perfect for you.

I might be tempted to compare, for a second.  And then I’ll remember how perfectly imperfect my life was too. And that was before cancer. It’s only perfect from the outside isn’t it?

Maybe I know you well enough to know some of your demons, or maybe there are lines of grief written in your everyday that I can’t begin to imagine. Just like you can’t imagine mine. And then I know (again) that it’s never perfect. Not ever. It never was, it never will be.

“Ring the bells that still can ring  Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack in everything  That’s how the light gets in.”  -Leonard Cohen

Sometimes, now, I walk around public places and watch people drift by and wonder at the unseen heartbreak they might be carrying around.  People whose life was once “perfection” but now holds suffering as vast as the skyline.  I marvel at the fact that they are out and about, their shopping bags seem full, they are getting their hair cut or oil changed, they are stopping to greet a friend with a warm smile.  I’m curious how they picked up the pieces and found their way back out.  I admire them and want to know their story.  The story of happiness despite grief, or anger, or uncertainty.   The way the light gets in.

“Your life is your life.  don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.  be on the watch.  there are ways out.  there is light somewhere.  it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances.  know them.  take them.” – Charles Bukowski

And so I remind myself that each moment need not be perfect, only illuminated here and there by offerings of joy, or love or patience or some other kind of grace.  Each day will not be perfect.  Each day will be what it is. And strung together these days become our life- complete with misery and imperfection and great love and mystery.  The unknown can either be fear and worry or it can be infinite possibility.

I think that’s as perfect as it will ever get.