(Listen to the audio version below)
I’d like to introduce you to a perfect beauty.
She’s not Instagram perfect. Not Hollywood perfect. She’s not photoshopped and collagen plumped, filtered and cropped. The kind of perfect that I’m escorting to this party is different.
Watch as she waltzes in on my arm. See the twist of her spine that reminds her of how she has had to fight to feel worthy of her beauty. Smell her scent, her unashamed natural aromas perfumed with jasmine and lavender. Hear her laugh – as loud as she wants to – baring crooked teeth that fought bravely against two rounds of braces. She is a mess, a beautiful, holy mess.
And I am not ashamed to admit it.
I Must Think I’m So Perfect
I recently turned 45. As I walk closer to the kind of age where people start referring to me as an elder, I can honestly say that my body is the best it’s ever been.
It’s not the same body I had when I was 25. It won’t be the same body I have when I’m 65. But it’s home, and I’m comfortable here for the first time in my life.
Some days being home looks like jumping for joy with excitement about how I look and my mobility. Other days I struggle with pain that results from old injuries and the scoliosis in my spine that makes me more susceptible to hurting myself.
All of it is part of my perfection.
A Better Investment
It’s taken thousands of dollars and many years to retrain a lifetime of messages telling me that my body is not what it should be. I could have bought their Botox with that money, but instead I bought my self-love.
But if you are a Botox person, you’re perfect too. If you are someone whose face is filled with wrinkles, you’re also perfect. You, the mess of you, are holy, imperfect perfection.
If you don’t believe me, you might be looking at yourself from the wrong angle.
Stop Fitting In
If you aren’t ready to accept your perfection, maybe a good metaphor will help.
The arbutus tree is an evergreen native to my current home of Vancouver Island, and its beauty is captured in paintings, photography, and the other places we reserve for good looks.
Yet even though it’s an icon, I’ve never seen a single arbutus tree that could hold off the worst trolls lurking in the comments. Their trunks twist and sprawl over footpaths. Their branches curl and kink in search of the best spot in the sun. Nothing is symmetrical. Nothing is planned.
And the bark – it’s grotesque and lovely. Every year it flakes off like dried skin, leaving a new, greenish trunk that becomes the site of photosynthesis. That’s right – our local favorite tree is so out there, it can’t even use its leaves to get nutrition like all the others.
The arbutus breaks all the rules. Yet, in doing so, it finds perfection.
Exactly, you should be saying as you look in the mirror.
It’s About You
I can give a thousand examples of this kind of imperfect perfection in nature – the way that waves lick the shoreline and erode the cliffs with their love. The way a volcano’s molten lava creates new, fertile land. But I want to keep the focus on you, your body, and your inherent perfection that only requires a different kind of glance.
Because after all, you are nature. And, just like nature, you are perfect because you are.
Imagine if you believed me on that point. Imagine if you rose up and stood in front of the biggest mirror you had, took your boldest posture and really looked at yourself the way an artist looks at something lovely.
You might see in your body a kind of perfection that cannot be standardized. One that cannot be contained or even described. And that is precisely what makes it the ideal.
How Do You Stack Up?
If we were to harvest the energy spent each year on convincing ourselves that our bodies are either too much or not enough, we would quickly have all the fuel we need to power our phones and continue comparing ourselves against influencers whose biggest beauty secret is that they know some lighting hacks.
Or, it might fuel the research that discovers that the walls of our jail and the key to the gate are the same – comparison.
We suffer from a collective outbreak of comparison. An epidemic of measuring up. A brutal plague of competition. But before you start nodding along and clicking your tongue at this reality, allow your mind to realize that our tendency for comparison is not all bad.
Comparison is a burden and a necessary part of life. Like all things, it can either destroy us or make us into our best.
For instance, when we see a person who walks into a room (virtual or not) with a commanding presence that we feel we lack, we compare in one of two ways. We either feel bad about where we are, or we notice where we want to go.
The way to alchemize comparison – and move toward the perfection of your right now – is to follow the latter.
This is about becoming your own point of self-reference, and letting everyone else have the same. No one has the same body. No one has the same starting point or series of life events. What we have is the ability to see ourselves as our own universes, and to celebrate the f#$& out of where we are, based on how we began.
Practice Perfect
I’ll tell you a little secret: even if you accept all that I’ve written here, there will be days when you don’t. We’ve been conditioned by a society that seems hell bent on us hating our bodies so we can buy things to make them better.
I’m not claiming to have mastered this either (I’m not perfect!?), but what I have done is learned to use a couple tricks to remind me of my perfection.
First, look for perfection in other people. Actively, almost aggressively, look for reasons to enjoy someone. You’ll get extra credit if you tell them what you see. In seeing another person’s wholeness, you make space for your own to show up.
Second, see all your so-called imperfections as your secret superpowers. They are not only what makes you memorable to others, but they hold the stories that make you, you. Every part of you tells a story, so claim it as your victory rather than being a victim.
As you step into these tactics, you’ll turn your body into a legend, the kind of story whose twists keep you captivated as you turn the pages.
If you let yourself be that kind of perfect, you’ll know what it’s like to walk into a party with the most beautiful person in the world on your arm.
