Learning Experiences

The great thing about life is that it is a learning experience right down to the last breath, if I allow it to be.

It is so easy to think that there is a saturation point, a place where I've done all I can. It is even easier to think that this is the way it is done, no need to make any changes.

Growing up, I sought perfection. We joked that it wasn't necessary -- all the time. I knew the real joke was that it was absolutely necessary. I had to become as perfect as possible. I had to look perfect, which becomes harder and harder as life truly progresses. I had to perform perfectly, until it became too hard to reach for that perfection and I quit. I had to respond perfectly to every situation no matter how hard. Pretty soon perfection surrounded me like a suit of ill fitting armor, creaking and jangling, separating me from myself and everyone else. Life was about the attainment of perfection, which of course is always just a step away.

It is so much easier to write about, talk about and create perfect scenarios with great crescendos and awesome climaxes, than it is to live them. Living them means allowing people to look at the woman beneath the armor, believing that she is worth looking at, and knowing that she will never be perfect. My mother gave me a perfectly perfect role model, who never strayed in any way from what was expected and perfect. She did the very best she knew how.

We all do the best we know how. No one wants to be a failure, but life is not supposed to only be about the winners, the top dogs, the people who are god like and perfect. Not everyone writes a best selling novel, or lives the life of a saint, but heroes are found in some of the most unlikely places. This is something I know is true. I may never be one, but I still recognize them when I see them!

Heroes are real people, with real feelings, doing real things. They feed the hungry, help the sick, provide what people really need. Mother Teresa did not go to a stylish church on Sunday morning looking for her people. She went to where the people were, the ones who needed what she did the best.

The heroes I know never set out to be heroes, don't even think of themselves as heroes. They just found themselves, took off their armor and walked out into the world vulnerable. Then they started taking care of the people around them.

They are not just my heroes. Now, they are my role models.