Imagine your life is one large painting canvas. What part of it are you working on right
now? Are you focusing on a particular
corner, or are you adding detail to several areas at once?
I don’t believe there is a correct answer. There are times in life where we need to
concentrate on specific areas. Other
times we need to step back and see if the entire painting is in balance.
The truth is that we will probably never get everything “just
right”. But that’s okay. There is no such thing as perfection. What we call perfection today is meeting the
standard. Take, for instance, a “Perfect
Game” in baseball. The definition of a
Perfect Game is that the opponent does not get any hits, there are no walks,
and there are only 27 plate appearances (3 outs per inning times 9 innings). There have been 23 Perfect Games in Major League
Baseball at the start of the 2021 season.
That means 23 times, the pitcher or combination of pitchers, only faced
27 batters. What if the standard got
tighter? What if we said that for a
perfect game, there can be only strikes thrown?
And what if we said that the batter cannot ever hit the ball, not even if
the contact results in an out such as a flyball that gets caught by the fielder? You can see that the definition of the Perfect
Game can be even more restrictive.
Chances are that after the first inning there would be no possibility of
a Perfect Game. And I haven’t even
touched on the offensive side of the equation.
A Perfect Game offensively in baseball would never end.
Clearly, the definition of perfect is…well…imperfect. But it does set a standard. In life, we need to set our own standards for
each area such as physical ability, cognitive ability, spirituality,
communication, etc. Then we can measure ourselves
against those standards and determine if we need to “up our game” to make the
picture clearer.
There will always be someone that is better than us in some
respect. The idea wouldn’t be to try to
be like the standard that someone else set, but we can use others to help us
set our own standards. For instance, if
we wanted to be better physically. We
could look at someone near our age and say that we wanted to be able to run as
far and as fast as them. Then, we can
set ourselves on a training regimen that would get us to meet that
standard. And let’s say that we achieve
the standard…does that mean that we are done?
We may see someone else that can do 50 pull-ups. We have to decide if that is a standard we
are wanting to go for. The idea is
that there is always something else to do.
But if we concentrate on one area, we may have to miss out on other
areas.
We can’t be constantly worried about meeting a physical
standard and neglecting the rest of ourselves.
If we stop learning or communicating with others, we may find ourselves alone,
staring at our bodies in the mirror. If
we take our whole selves as a large picture, we can have a richer, fuller life.
The painting of your life is never done.
How do you ensure that you are nurturing all parts of
yourself?
