the emptiness inside

Everybody wants me to be perfect.

What would perfect look like?
Have you ever been around anyone who was perfect?

I get it though, trying to live up to what we imagine others expect and want from us.
I can tell you that when we try to live for the approval of others we will always fall short, always.

Even if we meet every perceived demand we will always view the results though our own uncertain, questing, fearful eyes.

The truth, for myself anyway, was that it was not that everybody wanted me to be perfect, but that I felt I had to perfectly fill the needs of others so that I might be loved.

It was not perfection that threatened or seeking but Love!

The ideal of love is rooted in a contradiction.

We dream of being the center of the other’s world, and thus subject to the other’s freedom, but also of bringing the other into the center of one’s own world.

Thus, to be in love is to want to became subject to the impenetrable mystery of the beloved’s freedom, while at the same time wanting to reduce the beloved to the status of an object wholly at the mercy of one’s own calculations and will.

In others words we struggle to find balance of being both the master and slave of love, to respect our freedom and the freedom of the other.

The urge for perfection can be a move towards becoming a slave to love and as slave a loss of sense of self, so it is no wonder that this sense of self falls into despair.

On the other hand the hubris of perfection is an urge towards control and becoming the master of love, so it is no wonder that the other pushes us away and we fall into despair.

Balance is always difficult… until it isn’t.

We must work to overcome the contradictions of Love and find ways to create space that allows others to enter into our freedom as we enter into theirs.

The first step might be to learn how to set your own boundaries and take responsibility for them.