Yes, your life would be ideal, if only...
If only you were perfect.
Perfectly powerful, perfectly balanced, all-knowing, all-wise.
And if life were perfect, the world was perfect, people were perfect (and they did what you wanted...)...
________________________________________________________
IT'S OBVIOUS!
To anyone reading the above, it would seem very obviously ludicrous to expect anything like that, yet we live with some vague idea of what and how we should be, some ethereal standard not quite defined but pretty close to the above, with no clear boundary, only an endless wasteland...
It is time to learn enought to stop that unrealistic, fantasy-based, ungrounded vagueness of impossible expectations and the standards we turn them into.
If we set them up unrealistically high (which almost all of us do), we can only cause ourselves to "fall short" of them, as it is impossible to reach them. There is no point in setting a standard that is unattainable, no benefit. And the damage is that it creates a hell of self condemnation and frustration as we constantly see we are short of the standard. (See The Unhappiness Gap.)
TO GET THE FULL VALUE OF LIFE...
We must, to get the full value out of being human, appreciate and be incredibly grateful for the 1,000's of great functions of our body and the unbelievable power of our brains.
They have evolved beyond what would be good and sufficient.
Yet we have not evolved beyond where we have evolved. Make sense? We can't be better than our best, which is the uppermost limit of what we have evolved to! So we should not expect more, as it will do no good - and just make us miserable - which is not a great idea! So we simply must, then, accept our so-called limitationsof our abilities - and just have that be ok, for how could it be any better? (The latter is impossible.)
But the truth is that we are, relative to all that we could harvest in life, truly unlimited. We cannot, given the limited time, get to the edges of the box that is defined with our limitations. The box contains virtually an infinity of opportunities and combinations. It is up to us to determine which of those we can harvest, given that we must humanly learn, implement, make mistakes, learn, implement, and then harvest - which is, if we learn well, a bountiful harvest that is magnificent in its greatness and the happiness that we can produce.
A FAILURE OF CLARITY
If we fail to acknowledge and accept our limitations, we will not be happy.
If we fail to acknowledge that relatively there are no limitations to what we can harvest, we will not be happy (or nearly as happy as we can truly be).
To be happy, we must be absolutely clear about that. Otherwise, we'll create from the vagueness, needless suffering, and give up much of the happiness that can be created by us.
Remember that:
"Fear thrives on vagueness. Clarity provides the healthy seeing of what will work in life. With it, illusion and fear will be disappered."
The BuddhaKahuna
THERE IS NO VALID BASIS FOR MAKE-WRONG
A basic truth of life is that there is no legitimate existence of 'make-wrong'. It is just something we made up, not existing in reality but just, as Buddhism puts it, a "mental construct" (i.e. bullbleep, a creation solely in the mind, but falsely considered as real).
We criticize and judge others based on our false standards. But the truth is that stated by L. S. Barksdale (consistent with all the great philosophies, but, I think, particularly well said by him: (See the wisdom and writings of L.S. Barksdale.)
Each of us does the best we can at the time within the limits of our awareness. It is not the person who is at fault. It is the lack of awareness. And the solution lies in increasing the awareness [not in judging the person for not being further along than the person's life has caused him/her to be].
See the quote and a discussion in Compassion. Also, see the affirmations that are inferred and which support the basic lack of fault and acceptance of reality: Basic Daily Affirmations For Sound Self-Esteem. (I can tell you that his writings saved my rear-end at a stressful time of my life, exacerbated by my view of how I had to achieve at superlevels to be 'worthy'.)
YOU WILL NOT BE 100%
You will blow some of what you do. There are things you will not know, so you will, of course, make mistakes. But those mistakes will not ruin your life. They are only indication of 'not knowing', from which you can take the 'opportunity' to learn from, in order not to make the mistake again.
Mistakes are inevitable. "Imperfection" is inevitable. [But note that 'imperfection' is relative to perfection, which doesn't exist. But, relative to animals and barbarians, we are 'pretty perfect' - and that is pretty darned great!]
So "pretty good" should be based on doing better than 80%. As Richard Lui, my old guru, used to say, paraphrased: "If your significant other does 80% or better on your requests, consider that to be good enough - and be happy with that." I'm sure he said that with regard to life and to not criticizing oneself. I believe that is a good standard to use in life and one which considers the fact that we are just human and will never, in our lifetimes, exceed that.
JUST ACCEPT IT!
You're human and that is great. You're human and you dont' meet some artificial expectation. that's not an excuse, that is a scientific reality. It is something to accept, as there is no benefit at all of expecting it to be different - since it is impossible to overcome, except in movies.
Statements:
You MUST make mistakes. You do not know everything it would take not to make the mistake. You cannot know it all. Accept that!
You will sometimes misspend your money, not buy the best product for your money.
You will sometimes fail to understand how something will work.
You will sometimes be distracted and not complete things. (However, this is a largely controllable thing, but you'll never get to perfection.)
Every moment will not be filled with excitement or fun or even non-pain.
Crap will happen, but it is no big deal.
It's more like you are a body hurtling through a tunnel getting bruised a bit as you hit the walls and/or fall - 'tain't no big deal, as it is unavoidable. So we might as well accept it, minimize it to its actual size (demininus). You will survive. 99++% of it will just pass and you'll not even remember it, as it slips into the perspective of really being not significant, not meaningful, impactless.
The above is all a subpart of what you must learn, called Accepting Reality, which is actually in the Life Management section under the Power In Life section.
There is no good/bad, right/wrong. There is either doing what you want or not doing it because of lack of motivation (enough so you want to do it enough) and/or lack of complete enough knowledge.
That's it.
You're capable of doing all you need to do to be happy. You are Whole And Complete in regards to what is required - and it is essential that you know that. In that section the Dalai Lama is quoted: "...we all have all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness."
You could actually say I Am Perfect As I Am, in the relative sense, and you'd be telling the indisputable truth.
Now it is time to use this incredible equipment we have been blessed to harvest life for true happiness - and to just appreciate, appreciate, and appreciate...
