The Best I Can Do

Yesterday a blogfriend posted about limits: reaching them, resenting them, struggling with them, living within them. She wrote, "When your offering does not feel perfect, what is still the gift at hand?"

My offerings have not felt very perfect lately. My limits are sometimes quite large. I can't do hours of yardwork followed by hours of housework followed by a party -- my physical energy just can't meet that kind of goal, and so the outside is in sad need of some attention. I need large swathes of quiet solitude; howevermuch I love my friends, and I do, I can't spend a lot of time around people and keep my emotional center, especially right now, and so I'm hibernating. I can't lose sleep and function like a reasonable human being, so the grocery shopping gets sacrificed. I can't eat like crap and be at the top of my game, and so I'm slower than I'd like (see lack of grocery shopping). Even when I get enough sleep, eat well, and do the things I need to do to stay centered, I still can't do it all. And I was raised to do it all.

And so I've been frustrated and angered when I've tripped over my awkward attempts to fit in all the journaling and meditating and hanging out with my brain that I'm trying to fit in. I've been annoyed that it's taking us so long to get the adoption paperwork done, that we're still, years later, trying to make out and live within a budget, that the house, while much tidier than in days of yore, could really use a good power-washing (and I do mean the inside). I've been downright pissy about the struggle to balance the time I need with the relationships I value.

It's not just that I have limits. It's the feeling that I'm not doing the best that I could do -- that if I only muscled through the food stuff to eating at home, it would be okay, that if I only stayed up late one night to get the money stuff up-to-date, we'd get a handle on that, that if I only made enough lists and were disciplined enough, I'd have a really awesome spiritual life, that if I only put some effort in, the house would be pristine inside and out.

But what does "the best I could do" really mean? Could I force myself into doing these things, despite the toll they would take on my physical, emotional, and psychic energy, despite the way they would decenter me? Of course I could. But when I'm really honest with myself, I know that wouldn't be my best.

Right now, the best I can do involves really cozying up to my limits, getting to know them, figuring out how to write my life so that my limits and my ambitions are working in the same harness, instead of at cross-purposes. Right now the best I can do involves saying no a lot. Right now the best I can do involves not worrying too much about the carpet or the ductwork or even the vines taking over the back porch, because they are not what really matters.

My offering -- my Self -- is not perfect: it is slow and quiet and deliberate and it doesn't get everything on the to-do list done. My offering is not showy, or pretty, or even terribly civilized these days. And there is still a gift at hand: the many things I'm noticing about the world now that I'm slower, the gentle unfolding of things long-forgotten, the spaciousness at my center.

"Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."

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