“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”

NO.

That is some BULLSHIT. Do you really think that any person has ever been perfect? For that matter, how can you get people to agree on what perfection even means??

Perfection doesn’t exist. Period. It’s a myth, a falsehood, a lie. An impossible hamster wheel that too many good people spend too many of their good years overworking themselves to death on, never fully resting or recovering, grinding themselves down to exhaustion.

Be a good, imperfect person with flaws.

Life, and human beings, are messy and complex. Let be what is, you can’t change most of it directly anyway.

No wonder I was always tired and worried, no wonder I kept getting sick – I never slept enough and never truly relaxed. Never let my mind wander and daydream.

No wonder I find it impossible to push myself now – I’m catching up on decades of missed downtime!

I didn’t discover how to really and truly relax, physically and mentally, until fairly recently, when I discovered meditation, and when I learned to be in the present moment.

Our bodies and brains NEED downtime. Sleep is essential to every physical, mental, and emotional process in the body and brain.

Our brains, MY brain needs leisure time where it can think about whatever random shit it wants to, or nothing at all. My brain needs to wander and daydream and imagine and think idle thoughts and obsess about the minutiae of fan theories on some obscure nerdy anime or movie or video game or whatever happens to strike its fancy in the moment, to go down meaningless Wikipedia rabbit holes or think about nothing at all!

I got much happier when I stopped pushing soooo goddamn hard. And the old twinges of shame still come back from time to time, and I keep working on it, because I am a work in progress, and life is a process until it ends.

It is okay, nay, it is vital, to “waste” time “not being productive.” Far from a waste, it may be the most effective time you spend, because it allows you to continue being productive.

I wish I could tell my younger self to fucking RELAX, take a load off :). You’re not a machine, no matter how hard you may wish to be one. You’re a human being :).

But, I did what I knew at the time, and now that I know better, it’s time to do better….

…by doing LESS ;).