wholehearted living

Dance like no one is watching.  Sing like no one is listening.  Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.

- Mark Twain


Today I read The Gifts of Imperfection (by Brene Brown).  I know a lot of people like this book and say it changed their lives; that's exactly why I decided to read it.  Halfway through the book though, I wondered if it was worth finishing.  I'm going to be honest about it because the book talks so much about how important it is to be true to yourself rather than to seek approval of others and fitting in.

To me, the book was abstract (despite the fact that it had a fair amount of examples drawn from the author's experience; unfortunately I couldn't really relate to them), there were too many definitions (though I understood the importance of them), and it just didn't speak to my heart.  Maybe I've read too many self-help materials that I've become numb.  Maybe my expectaion was too much.  Maybe people like me don't read self-help books in the first place.  At any rate, I wouldn't have bothered to leave a note about it if it hadn't been for the last chapter where she talks about dancing:

...there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing.  It's literally full-body vulnerability. ...(but) you can see this desire to move in children.  Until we teach our children that they need to be concerned with how they look and what other people think, they dance.  They even dance naked.  Not always gracefully or with the beat, but always with joy and pleasure.

As a kid, I loved dancing.  I took ballet lessons and I remember being comfortable enough to dance in front of my classmates at least up till seven.  Now I never dance.  One reason is that dancing is not prevalent in the Japanese culture.  Schools never have dancing parties.  The Japanese in general are not used to expressing themselves through dancing and I am no exception.  But there was a time in my life when I was not embarrassed at all.  So I must have changed, no matter how much I claim that I usually don't care too much about what people think about me.  And if that -- measuring my worth on the scale of others -- is getting in the way of leading a wholehearted life, I will probably go back to the book again someday when I really realize that.  Right now, I have a vague feeling that my problem (if there is any) lies somewhere else.

As I was talking to my mother about the book though (I thought about the problems she was facing while reading the book), I came up with a single idea that seemed very convincing.  I've been struggling to find some comforting words the past couple of months, resulting in some pretty nasty fights every time my mother dwelled upon the fact that her life seemed so meaningless.  I thought: well, that's what life is; it's meaningless and it's painful and empty but you live it because that's life.  But today, as I was talking to her, I said something I might want to say to my future self when I hit my own mid life crisis:

Now that you look at how your picture has turned out to look like, you might be depressed to find out that it doesn't look at all like the picture you had in mind or the ideal picture you've suddenly created in your head, but when you were painting the picture, you probably always chose the best color and the best brush every time you added a stroke.  It was always the best stroke.  Even if it seems like a mistake now, it doesn't change the fact that it was the best in that moment, no matter the reason.  There was a meaning back then, and if you can't find it now, it doesn't matter.  Love your picture as it is because it's the best picture you could've painted.  It may not be perfect but there is no such thing as perfect -- if your "perfect picture" had been the reality you would've found that imperfect anyway.  All we can do is live in the moment.  You can't really control the ultimate outcome (in many cases it will not fit your ideal image) but it's still something worth loving because it's the result of those moments you lived that you could not have lived better, no matter what you think of them now or what you thought of them then.

In short, maybe it's almost like the mere fact that you made a certain choice makes that choice good enough -- if that makes any sense.