Meditation: When does it end?

I have a problem with perfection. No, not even perfection. The idea that everything around me could be just a little bit or a lot better IF. If only. If only I had the money, the time, the strength. If only the dog wouldn’t dig in the yard, if only the grass wouldn’t grow over there, if only the grass would grow more quickly over there, if only bugs wouldn’t eat my vegetables. If only this house weren’t so small, the front porch so broken, the driveway so narrow.

I was running that thought stream through my head as I sat outside drinking coffee. I looked over near the fenceline and felt it needed tidied up, weeds whacked, pulled, and mulch put down. I looked at the haphazard chickenwire fence protecting my beds of garlic and felt it needed to be replaced. I looked at the shed and thought for the millionth time again that it needs rebuilt or at least painted.

I knew this was a trap of thinking. My thinking patterned by years of being told I wasn’t enough, that I needed to be just a little bit better. Family, teachers, advertisements and finally internalized. My own self against myself trying to be just a little bit or a lot better than what I was at the moment.

As often happens, a line came to me. It suggested I try it out while looking around the yard. So I looked at the tall line of dandelions at the edge of my shade bed and repeated the line, “There is nothing that needs to be changed.” I looked around the yard at the holes and bald spots and misplaced stones and said it again, “There is nothing that needs to be change.”

Feeling into the words. Feeling into the idea. Feeling into the sense of those words, I was able to see beyond my yard as a litany of to-dos and failures-to-get-done. It became an interesting landscape. My yard was a collection of colors and shapes and impressions. It wasn’t an invitation to berate myself and my circumstances. It was just a place. If I looked up I could see a sky and other people’s yards and trees and clouds and sunlight. Instead of dividing my yard from all that I could see and make it a project that screamed at me to get it done, I could put it together with everything else I saw and create a whole picture of a place I was experiencing through my eyes, my ears, and my nose and my skin.