On “the Imperfect Best” - A Review

Edit: Hi -- This blog was written in haste on a cell-phone. I now know that this was a bad idea. I have rewritten it to make it legible and to finish it. I hold myself to a higher standard than what was published on Friday, and while I might excuse typos and some ranting, I can't really forgive putting something out here that's unfinished. So. Here it is:

I’m lucky to have met a lot of amazing people in my life. Some of them have become regular facets of my own unfolding path and others served as more temporary trail markers who confirmed or showed me some way, but left just as soon as they appear.

Life’s linearity is something I often struggle with. Because while I am simultaneously unlikely to cross paths with a lot of people ever again, I will always have our singular intersection as a moment to remember them by.

But sometimes, these assumed tangential crossings become more than what they appear. Sometimes, the world is smaller than one might think. And other times, well, other times you meet someone who so succinctly summarizes a philosophy you’ve held for your entire life, and yet, its someone who has lived in a drastically different world than you.

They might have come to their conclusion earlier, or later, regardless, you both reached it earnestly and in isolation. And that, for many reasons, has been on my mind this Friday morning.

Jason Freeman taught my brother, my mom and I about the imperfect best sometime last year in a book store in La Jolla. He had written a book about it, and was sharing that book with us. I don’t want to spoil Jason’s writing, story, or message, but it is astoundingly worth reading and can be found in the book: Awkwardly Awesome: Embracing my Imperfect Best. What I will spoil is the meaning of the subtitle, the subject of our conversation, and the most readily apparent “lesson learned” of Freeman’s book.

No one is perfect. But everyone can try their hardest.

This doesn’t sound complicated. But. It’s the simplest things that sometimes are hard to keep in mind when things get a little rough.

For a long while, I was kind of convinced that all I ever had to do was try my best in order to be successful. And it's true, to an extent. So long as I'm doing everything I can and doing my best then I consider myself successful.

I've also recently realized, that the quality I generally admire most in someone else is effort. All of my best friends are people I respect and love because they try hard.

But lately, I've lost sight of that. While I continue to respect those around me who do try, I myself have found effort to be a waning virtue.

To explain, I still do try my hardest, day in and day out. But lately, I've felt like it hasn't mattered. That all this work, has gotten me basically nowhere.

Part of that is because I'm in a position where I am three steps behind everyone else. And another part of that is because I'm just so tired of losing all the time.

But "losing" is a relative term. I think one of the biggest hangups I had to get over is the fact that the world isn't black and white, especially when it comes to "success."

Additionally, there are some situations where there is really just choosing how you fail. And well. I've been in a lot of those lately.

But the benefit of doing your best is that failure feels like a lesson before it feels like anything else.

The issue now is dealing with the complacency that comes with that acknowledgement. But. I guess that's something I'll write about when I can figure out how to fix it.

Anyway. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.