No Matter What, Life is Perfect

What I want to tell you is that things already are perfect the way they are. We go about our lives doing the "right" things, saying the "right" things, acting the "right" way, but we are reaching toward an unreal picture of perfection, a figment of our imagination. You can do everything right, and still one day you wake up and things all of a sudden don't fit into your picture of right. You can eat the right foods, and do the right work, and raise your kid the right way, and still life happens.

This isn't to say that what we do is useless; consciousness is absolutely everything. But the thing is, we spend our lives in this illusory sequence of motions and words which is meant to "make everything perfect," and what that really translates to is that we won't feel any pain. We take off into this world of illusion with great pleasure because it makes us believe that we are avoiding pain.

But then you wake up one day and things are different, something is "wrong," something happens which doesn't fit into your perfect picture of a perfect world. All of a sudden you are brought to see a reality which is easy to label bitter, or unjust, or unhappy, or unlucky. But really - it's just life, you are just present and you get to see that this moment, and this thing that happened, no matter what it is, is still a perfect part of a perfect whole.

I wonder about these things. On this day in particular, two years to the day when my little boy was diagnosed with diabetes. I remember the first time I left him somewhere where it was completely safe - everybody knew everything about diabetes and for the first time in 6 months I could let go of the that terrible tension of always keeping watch. I wept my tears and then I walked on the beach. There I saw and felt the familiar caution mothers have when their children are sitting playing and strangers walk by. But I thought - yes, we do what we can, we protect, we take care, we do everything right, and still one day we can wake up and find out our child has cancer, or autism, or diabetes, or something else.

There is a part of us that wants to think that doing everything right will make everything perfect forever, but then when things happen we want to think that doing everything right just isn't enough. This is the place you have to get to with life. You have to take positive and right action, and you have to know that what is, IS right. No matter how it hurts, no matter how difficult life is, it IS right, simply because it is what we are experiencing here and now.

In the end it is not the experience but what we make out of it that is most powerful and that speaks the volumes of who we are in life. It is not about the precautions we take to not ever experience any of these things, it is all about being present with them.

On this day I like to remember that life is perfect and that everything we are given in life is a gift. It's hard to remember that when you are sticking needles into your child, or you are visiting your child on a cancer ward, or you are trying to get through the fog of an autistic mind you know is bright and full of love if only you can reach it. It's hard to remember that everything really is perfect just the way it is, especially when you are feeling that everything might your "fault," because you just weren't perfect enough, didn't do enough, couldn't be enough.

Perfection itself is perfect presence. It's not about pre-cautionary perfect moves to create perfect outcomes. It is the moment. Like it is. On this day even though I grieve a little, I also celebrate because it reminds me that no matter what, life is perfect.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2008 Darshan F Jessop