Being imperfect….being enough….

Today’s post is offered as a salve for those who suffer the agonies of not being perfect. We long so much to get it right and most of the time we are imperfect. Actually imperfect is all we ever have to be, and adopting a kind and self-compassionate approach to our ordinariness is the only way of living a sane and balanced life. We live in strange times, shot through by corrosive narcissism. So here is an oasis of sanity, in the shape of one of my favourite poems, by the incomparable Alice Walker. The poem is called ‘My Daughter is Coming!’ It reminds me of all the times I longed for more, and encourages me to settle for enough.

 

 

 

My daughter is coming!

I have bought her a bed

and a chair,

a mirror, a lamp

and a desk.

Her room is all ready

except that the curtains

are torn.

Do I have time to buy sojhi panels

for the window? I do not.

 

First I must WRITE A SPEECH

See the doctor about my tonsils

which are dying ahead of schedule.

see the barber, and do a wash

cross the country.

Cross Brooklyn and Manhattan.

MAKE A SPEECH.

WRITE A POEM.

Liberate my daughter from her father and Washington DC

Recross the country

and present her to her room.

 

My daughter is coming!

Will she like her bed, her chair,

her mirror, desk and lamp?

Or will she see only

the torn curtains?

 

 

Alice Walker. From Her Blue Body, Everyting We Know.