Picture Perfect
When you look through just about any magazine, the pictures in the advertisements are perfect. The amount of expertise it took to get them that way is admirable, but, for the most part, they are manufactured reality.
If we could only get our kitchen, bathroom, lawn, garden, hair, body, etc. to look like the ones in the ads, everything would be perfect.
Perfect is a mind made condition that has us strive for something that’s unattainable.
Perfection is the Holy Grail that’s filled with holes.
Here is a conundrum: Everything we do is imperfect and perfect alike.
Being human is being imperfect. There are flaws in real life that cannot be airbrushed away. Yet, The Grasshopper says that “Reality is Perfection.” That means that everything that happens is perfect. It’s perfect because it’s the only way it can be. What happened, happened.
So the imperfection that is part of being human is our penchant to rail against reality which is perfect.
I think the closest a human being can get to being perfect is to respond to reality.
We as a species are addicted to reaction. That’s about as imperfect as it gets. Something happens and we have a conditioned reaction to it, usually the same one we had last time. We are stuck in a cycle of imperfect reaction which delivers the same out of focus solutions and stalemates.
You have an opportunity to be as perfect as you can be every waking moment of every day. It begins with choosing a response to reality.
Again, I quote The Grasshopper who just this morning said, “Free will isn’t free.” You have to work for it.
The work entails choosing a response to reality instead of running the same reaction. Where is the free will in letting the same reaction to reality happen again? That’s automatic pilot, not free will.
Free will enters the picture when you begin to notice that you are reacting and you choose a response instead.
Reminds me of a story . . .
I once worked for a very evil man. He was part mad scientist and part Neanderthal. He was part owner/operator of a radio station I worked for. The bookkeeper told me that 236 people worked for him in 5 years. This was a small Mom & Pop radio station, so that’s a lot of people in a short time span. He hired and fired more than he changed his socks. He was as arbitrary as a person could be and this made for a work environment that was extremely challenging.
I was one of the longer term employees. I lasted 6 months. Oh, by the way, he fired me over the phone. The good news for me was that I was able to gain employment outside of radio within a few weeks, but my desire was to get back into radio full time. 6 weeks later the phone rang and it’s my ex boss wanting to know if I could come back temporarily to fill in for the guy he just fired who replaced me 6 weeks before. It would only be until he could find a replacement for him.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I pulled the receiver away from my ear and looked at the phone and remember these high volume words about to leave my lips “FU.” Free will kicked in a split second later and I said this F-word instead – “Fine.”
It was the best Christmas ever. We had one more unemployment check coming in, my wife had gotten a job, I kept the job outside of radio and now I had the radio job too. The better news is that one of the shows I did during this period was heard by another program director in another city who offered me a full time job in radio. The ability to respond to reality rather than react saved the day.
You might say it was perfect.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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