2007-01-21 - 2:02 p.m.

Perfection

Life has been peaceful, lately. I feel that I am solidly on my own feet for perhaps the first time ever. There is room for thought and I am responsibly saving money with frugal, near-Spartan living by modern standards. I am talking to people; not just one person at a time, with whom I eventually burn out and become disappointed. A total change of paradigm: having enjoyable, semi-meaningful conversations with several people at once.

I am aware of a few large issues to which I have never paid appropriate attention. I am still moderately unforgiving, occasionally for very stupid things. There is still a remarkable buildup of vitriol in my head and it still spills out sometimes at people who deserve slightly better.

If I'm going to go off on someone, it should be for things that are entirely theirs. Venting spleen intended for someone else on an unfortunate substitute isn't right. That said, I will still go off on the rare person who genuinely deserves it and who is personally having a major, deleterious effect on the lives of the people I care about. I will not stop doing that. I'll just do it accurately.

The last two years have not been wasted. I have learned a lot about how to deal with frustration, I think, and some of the interpersonal difficulties that come with having a degree of ethical certainty when the other person is just as certain that you're wrong.

It is also worth noting that from my willingness to put up with what I did for the year or so that things were bad, I am considering the possibility that it may very well be critical to the success of future relationships that I have a fair number of close friends. If I'm so hard out for companionship that I'll ignore virtually anything en route to it, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to form an equal relationship with me. I'd never really looked at it that way. Additionally, there shouldn't be the pressure for one person to fulfill all of [i]any[/i] of my needs, I don't think; not if they don't want to, and that's something you shouldn't have decide far in advance of knowing what the relationship is going to be about.

I have not started muay thai yet. I know where I will go when I do, but the store has finally decided that I ought actually be trained as though I were staying awhile instead of leaving immediately. Pursuant, I will be bouncing between closing and opening shifts with some irregularity in the coming weeks. It seems a shame to pay for classes like that and then not use them to their fullest.

Maybe there's something free involving tai chi nearby. I always liked how that looked.

I think what I've realized most in the past three months is that I can still be en route to the perfection I'm looking for, but that it's not something I'll snap into. The expectation of a threshhold of effort forcing me into a new plane of being is just not realistic, and it's more than likely holding me back from real development. Expectations are one of the largest obstacles to success in personal growth, I think, and one of the most subtle.

It's like the weight training I'm doing. For years I've had the knowledge in the back of my head that I was not as strong as I had been coming out of highschool, because I'd been weight training every day then. I still only weighed in at around 120, but I was at least stronger than the 120 I was at 23. This led to all sorts of subsurface unhappiness and the mental image of being a stringy, weak old man.

Now I'm substantially stronger than I've been at any time in my life. Having taken full control of what I eat and how much, I'm up to 145 and benching a few pounds more than that.

I don't know why I'm so focused on my arms. And stomach, I've done a lot of good things with my stomach lately; the old eight-pack is back with us after living underground for quite some time. I guess arms are useful for moving large things around, but I really ought to be more conscientious about deadlifts and such for my lower body.

Perfection, like muscle growth, is a long and painful process. It's not even worth it, I don't think, if you sit and add up every ounce of effort that you've poured into it. If you value things like that -- time you wouldn't have used for anything good or valuable anyway -- then yeah, perfection is a waste.

I don't, though. I recognize that this is time I would most likely have wasted if I didn't spend it thinking about what's inside my head and how to make it better, or pushing steel discs on a heavy bar higher and lower over my neck until my arms shake.

Someone said it's not the destination, it's the journey. I used to agree. It's not, though, and I understand why now. It's not the destination because you don't just appear places unchanged by your travels unless you're Odin, and it's not the journey because it's really not as much about what came behind you, either.

Or not [i]just[/i] about what's behind you, I should say.

It's about where and who you are now. The scars from your passage through life's thickets and the shine in your eyes when you're looking at your chosen Direction. These things are our life, if we're attentive to them; they can hold our contemplative gaze without faltering.

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