Maybe It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect

caterpillar

I have been working extremely long hours for several weeks now.  I spent a sad portion of the Father’s Day weekend tackling my endless load of spreadsheets for work and have lost track of the number of times I have worked until 2 or 3 in the morning over the past month. To put it mildly, I’m exhausted.

So when I found this amazing caterpillar a couple of days ago, I already knew that I was going to struggle with finding the time to write about it. However this magical creature was  incredible, and something so small yet so spectacular deserves to be celebrated.

Nevertheless I highly dislike slapping a post on the internet just for the sake of generating something / anything. It feels as though I am being disingenuous and rings hollow to me. A dear friend wisely reminded me to not sweat the small stuff with the beautiful words, “Maybe it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

I have been feeling like I have been caught once more in the whirlpool of life as I am inundated with my own attempts to keep everything perfectly above water. Family. Work. More work. House. Projects. More projects. All of these must meticulously handled and managed. Or else…

Or else the world will still keep spinning. The kids will always continue their pattern of doing kid things. Work will keep coming and will continue to be there whether I opt to work myself to the bone or (more wisely) choose to follow more reasonable hours. The house will stand even if laundry doesn’t happen today. And the projects. The endless projects. Those will be ready whenever I have time for them, too. Admittedly those can be rather therapeutic for me, but my husband might revise that to therapy-inducing. Lucky for me, he doesn’t blog, so we’ll go with my version.

At the end of the day, my friend is unquestionably correct. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The posts may have a few grammatical errors, the laundry may blanket the sofa like an odd but fresh-smelling slipcover, and some projects may staying on the pending list a little longer, but that’s okay.

Taking a mental break to write a few words calms me, and taking a moment to celebrate the mystical worlds that surrounds me makes my soul feel light. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect.

We don’t need to struggle with aiming to achieve perfection because it is already an innate part of our design. If we can move past demanding perfection from our lives, we will allow those magical moments to shine naturally.

We are where we are supposed to be in this moment. So in this moment, take a minute to breath. A minute to celebrate the good. A minute to reconnect to your spirit and the wonders around us. A minute to recognize the perfection that is endlessly around us and with us. Like this beautiful caterpillar, we are all amazing and beautiful, and we are on the journey to become even more spectacular. That sounds a lot like perfection to me.  🙂

Love and light to you always.  Joanna

***Thank you to my dear friend for reminding me that you can celebrate the moment in the smallest of ways. You are amazing dear one! Much love and gratitude to you always. https://misifusa.wordpress.com/

Metamorphosis of the Monarch Caterpillar

I love butterflies. Their spectacular transformation is such a beautiful analogy to our own human journey of growth and awakening.

butterfly1

Unfortunately all of nature doesn’t appear to be in agreement with my sentiments. To our collective horror, my daughter and I witnessed a wasp tearing a caterpillar to shreds a couple of weeks ago in our yard. Consequently we were instantly inspired to create an impromptu monarch village via the butterfly boxes that are temporarily parked on my dining room table. Admittedly it feels a little “Silence of the Lambs” in there, but we have yet to make any skin suits out of the neighbors.

butterfly3

The butterflies are lovely and they bring such joy to all of us whenever we release them. However we have yet to sit for hours to watch every stage of their development. In all fairness to us, we can’t sit for hours doing anything. Given this short attention span challenge we face, I thought that it would be interesting to record one of our monarch caterpillars changing to chrysalis form so we could speed it up. The video is only about a minute long, but the actual process shown here took several hours.

Feel free to share with your children. It’s fascinating to watch this wild caterpillar in action. 🙂

Hugs to you! 🙂 Jo

This is the youtube link. https://youtu.be/BEFIUzgN5qY

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