“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” Albert Einstein

This feels like the first time I know where I have wanted to end up with a story, but not quite sure how to get there. It is always a sure sign of my needing a word map to get me there when I look for a quote from Einstein. Can I just say something about him? His mind is like the genie’s bottle, rub it in a certain direction and he will brilliantly and succinctly take you there, long before you have any idea of the destination.

I am not sure when we experience our first disappointments. I like to think of it as our conflict between pleasing our parents or continuing to crap in our pants, which really feels wonderful. For many of us, this may be the first time we no longer get our way and I don’t think most of us recover from the trauma. Of course Mick was right, when he sings, “You can’t always get what you want.”

It is kind of down hill from there, looking to lay blame on anyone other than ourselves for anything at all that gets in the way of our wanting what we want and wanting it right then.

I am not sure there is a more valuable education than learning it is never about anyone else, but ourselves, first and foremost. We always look outside ourselves, because it is the most convenient and the least damning. Along with Big Al, Shakespeare was a genius of the word and its intention. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Forever and ever, we have been directed to look within ourselves for answers and still, we ignore the most basic truth of our fallibility.

Our lives are so terribly flawed. My life is terribly flawed. I think the worst thing I ever did was to leave NYC and my young boys, who were around 15 and 12 at the time. While divorce was unavoidable, for reasons that will forever stay with me, leaving my sons was devastating for them. I guess if I had been a shitty, weekend Dad, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I wasn’t. I loved them with all my heart and was actually pretty, damn good, even under those strained circumstances.

For years, I justified my actions, based on what I needed to do for myself. Man, there are loads of examples I could use to make my point, but why avoid the heart of the matter? Sure, I know what I did and why, but it has taken years to see it through their eyes. Very often, memory is this wonderful teflon coated device. Make no mistake, I am not talking about forgiveness or justification either. I am talking about imperfection and finally I get to use the word here.

Christ, I don’t when it actually begins for each of us, this idea that we are meant to be eternally happy and that anything falling short is somehow our fault. Expectation is the kiss of death. Please, don’t get me wrong, I am not implying that life sucks and we need to swallow it without even chewing. My sweet friends, it take decades and decades of life to lovingly embrace our shortcomings, understanding that at the core of our unhappiness is this terrible truth that we are a flawed creature. Time after time, we set these terribly high standards, guaranteeing an inevitable fall from grace.

We live, enslaved by so many inane platitudes, attainable only by angels, but not us humans. The Buddha made a very big deal about suffering being an inherent part of our existence. It is too easy to misunderstand his intention, assuming that we are all sentenced to an inescapable prison sentence, a life time of darkness. While none of us think we will live forever, the reality of our mortality is something many of us fight with our entire lives. Continually looking outside ourselves for permanence is a guarantee for disaster.

I have been afforded a wonderful opportunity to spend plenty of time with myself. I have gotten to know myself reasonably well, not always liking what I see, but that’s the ticket. I have not absolved myself of wrong doing, but I have learned to accept my shortcomings. I think that’s what the Buddha was talking about. Embracing yourself is an act of forgiveness, the wellspring of compassion and love.

Our view of the world around us starts with how we see ourselves, which certainly helps to explain why things have been so screwed up for so long. The mirror we use to see ourselves is the mirror we look through to see others. Our imperfection is what we share and it needs to be embraced and not continually weaponized.

You know, when I first started writing these stories, I would very often end up with these treatises on life, making sweeping statements about too many things. I know it is the small stories that really matter and I have tried to be as personal as I could. However, I do have these tendencies to occasionally veer off course. So, I apologize for this one, but I just couldn’t help myself. It’s a bitch trying to be perfect all the time!

Thanks for your time.