{"id":440,"date":"2019-01-24T10:39:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T09:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/?p=440"},"modified":"2019-01-30T17:15:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:15:51","slug":"im-not-that-great-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/im-not-that-great-actually\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m not THAT great, actually"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Late-Thirties Lesson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think for a moment and try to identify a period in your life when you felt you could conquer the world. Or a time when you felt like you were created for something amazing and grand.<\/p>\n

Faced with difficulty, you toughed it out and just went on, and it seemed as if the farther you went, the wiser you became, absorbing everything like a sponge. I felt like that at twenty-one.<\/p>\n

It was the only time in my life when I was hyper-talkative in three languages, mostly about “I, myself and me”, pouring out whatever ‘brilliant’ thoughts crossed my ‘brilliant mind.’<\/p>\n

I remember when a philosopher-friend in France covered my mouth with his hand because he couldn’t get a word in.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, life has its way of teaching even the most resistant and self-centered humans precious (life) lessons…. most of us will eventually wake up to reality and realize that, actually, we’re not THAT great and not THAT versatile.<\/p>\n

Before hitting mid-thirties, I had heard my friends complain about how their perception of themselves and their abilities changed sharply at around that age.<\/p>\n

All of a sudden, they became acutely aware that, although they can do a lot of things in their lives, there is also a host of other things they will never achieve or experience.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, they reported, they woke up and beheld a sea of doubt and self-questioning within themselves. All while being in perfect mental health and in their prime otherwise.<\/p>\n

I must report that I have been experiencing something of that sort too. It isn\u2019t life-changing in the immediate sense of the term. It has nothing to do with wishing I were somewhere else\/doing something else. Not at all.<\/p>\n

I thank God every day for all the people around me and everything I have because I’m literally living out my dream: I feel loved and needed on a daily basis and get unlimited hugs and kisses 24\/7.<\/p>\n

All three of my kids are affectionate and loving and my husband is great company.<\/p>\n

Still, I have (finally) realized, with great clarity, that not only will I never accomplish a few things I had vaguely entertained in my mind (like being a diplomat), but also (and this is somewhat painful to admit) I’m waaaay more imperfect than I had trained myself to believe all these years.<\/p>\n

When I was younger, I excelled at school. I took part in academic competitions, reaping a number of rewards and pats on the back. I accelerated my degrees both at Dartmouth and at the University of Montreal.<\/p>\n

I was busy, I was an A student. Thus I also learned to perceive myself as “hard-working”.<\/p>\n

But, that was twelve years ago. Reality check has been long overdue. I need to do some serious work on the “here and now” and take a fresh look at my persona.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These days, I’m quite busy with the kids while juggling a few work hours. I try to make sure our house is reasonably clean, dinners cooked, shopping done, lessons taught, translations project completed.<\/p>\n

Yet, it has also dawned upon me that although I surely am busy, I’m not the same hard-working and conscientious person any more.<\/p>\n

I do lots of things half-heartedly because I feel that if I didn’t, they would take up too much time at the expense of other things, meaning that I would eventually fail to fit them all into my schedule.<\/p>\n

There’s some truth to this and all parents of young children know that they should steer clear of perfectionism.<\/p>\n

But it can also become and excuse and something detrimental in the long-run. Even when given enough time for a particular task, I might still fail to be completely on it and dismiss it hastily to get it over with.<\/p>\n

Plus, I\u2019m struggling full time between chaos and order, order and chaos. I have come up with many solutions to keep some of the chaos under control, but it still gets the better of me. I do not do things in logical order. I have problems with sequences and consistency in general. I do the same things differently every time for no reason.<\/p>\n

To illustrate my imperfection and challenges in a (hopefully) slightly more entertaining way, below are a few complaints read off the minds of those closest to me (somewhere deep inside I would not like these\u00a0 projections of mine to be true\u2026. but they most likely are):<\/p>\n

“My wife’s cooking has been so predictable and boring. She embarks upon her evening cooking with an invariable groan “oh, cooking again” and opts for one of those “run-of-the-mill” recipes. I’m not excited about opening the lunch tupperware at work any more.”<\/p>\n

“Mum sometimes gets so stuck at home she doesn’t want to take us to the park. She rarely indulges in creative mess with us.”<\/p>\n

“I cringe when I see her drive out of the garage every morning. No wonder their car sports a few bruises.”<\/p>\n

“This woman hardly ever responds to text messages in a timely manner. She offers a lame excuse that ‘she’d tossed her phone somewhere random’ and doesn’t call back until the next day.”<\/p>\n

“She seems intellectual but when I ask her about the books she’s been reading, she says she now reads only five books a year and she can hardly describe the last one she read.”<\/p>\n

“Gosh, she’s so chaotic as a tutor. The moment you take your seat, she rushes out to fetch tea, then to get a cd player, or bring a missing pencil like she couldn’t do this earlier. She must have some attention-deficit disorder that hasn\u2019t been officially diagnosed yet.”<\/p>\n

“You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve seen her kids licking their dropped food off the kitchen floor.”<\/p>\n

“She doesn’t stock her pantry the way a decent housekeeper should. And she hasn’t planted anything in her yard. It’s all mud and weeds, what a sorry sight!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe assigns homework and then it goes right out of her mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

“She prays to Me regularly, but her prayers are chaotic and unfinished, at random times of the day. Sometimes it feels like being fed leftovers.”<\/p>\n

The consolation is that God can work His way through my weaknesses and shortcomings. From what I know from a number of wise and faith-filled people, He operates through all of our imperfect cracks:\u00a0 this is how you let God so that He can actually take over the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Late-Thirties Lesson Think for a moment and try to identify a period in your life when you felt you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifesfinest.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}