Several of you have asked for it — here it is: my journey through idealism and how I finally made peace with “imperfection.”

When I was 17, still in high school, and passionately seeking to define myself, I took a personality indicator test, designed to measure how people perceive the world and make decisions. Proudly, I owned the resulting summarization of ME as, “Idealistic: a person who represents things as they might or should be rather than as they are.”

I was ecstatic. Someone, somewhere understood me — heck, there were probably even others out there like me! I embraced my new title, vowed to use my natural born vision to better the world and set off to educate myself about issues I saw as most important.

Studying sustainable agriculture in college, I sewed, thrifted and propagated my way through the early days of single parenthood, satiating my growing urgency to make a difference by attempting (in vain) to reform the snack policies at my daughter’s preschool, convincing reluctant grocers to give us their discarded produce for dehydration and theorizing about off-grid living and intentional communities with the few fellow visionaries I had, indeed, met along the way (now my closest friends and husband).

A full-time mother my entire 20s, my idealism was further fueled by the obviously crucial work of saving motherhood from the clutches of our confused and commercialized culture. I honored my utopic vision by promoting and encouraging home birth, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby-wearing, co-sleeping, and handmade everything. By the time my third daughter was born, however, and considering that I was also needed to make financial contributions to the family, the level of activity required to maintain my standards, my household and my work for pay (with the children home) was starting to wear on me — just a bit.

Funny, other mothers I knew did not speak of ridiculously long to-do lists with bullets like, “hang diapers to dry,” “design, cut and sew 40 linen dresses,” or “hand print the holiday gift-wrap.”

Maybe they were cool with compromise, but I was on a mission.

Determined as I was, my frustration was mounting. I found myself in a constant struggle between whether it was more important to dig the garden (with a baby on my back), teach the kids to embroider, bake bread from scratch or research grant money available for the graduate program I hoped to begin. (Never mind dump the compost bucket toilets, bathe the kids in frigid water or sling a hammer alongside my mate lest it rain through the unfinished roof).

The list seemed to grow twice as fast as I could check things off. Occasionally Hunter would look at my transcribed prioritization and, perplexed, question my logic. “Why do you have to make 20 snow globes as party favors?” or “Don’t you think the cold frames can wait until next year?” to which I would roll my eyes, hand him the baby and get back to work.

Though I couldn’t see it at the time, I had inadvertently bought into the cultural lies that told me more was better, while still holding tight to my ideals about the “best” way to live. Passionate about so many subjects, and feeling somehow that compromise equaled failure, I had created an unrealistic and unfulfilling lifestyle that left me wondering what else I could add to create the harmony I envisioned. John Galsworthy sums it up perfectly, “Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.” Boy, was I at close range.

After baby number four, I hit bottom. It was either succumb to defeat and compromise or lose my maternal mind. Looking back over the years leading up to that point I can see a pretty clear progression:

Idealism, unchecked, bred perfectionism.
Perfectionism, unchecked, bred a sense of inadequacy.
Inadequacy, unchecked, bred disappointment.
Disappointment, unchecked, bred cynicism.
Cynicism, unchecked, eventually bred anger.

And angry I was. Angry with myself for having “failed,” angry with the world for its utter and plentiful injustices and angry with my husband for, well, just about everything.

Reluctantly, I began letting go. I bought disposable diapers and used them when I was behind on the laundry or running errands. I stocked up on frozen pizzas and let the sun have the garden. I started asking friends about their transition from homeschooling to public school and napped with the kids instead of frantically cleaning or catching up with the day’s busy work. I incorporated a night to myself every week and slowly felt life flowing through me again.

Newly receptive to the advice of others, I cried on the shoulders of wise women and respected elders, I poured through books in search of the peace I sought and begged my maker for clarity. I was just trying to live right! How could I have invested so much of myself and still failed so miserably?

Then, just when I was vulnerable enough to fully receive it, it came — the missing piece (and the missing peace). The single most life-changing perspective shift I’ve experienced to-date:

Everything is exactly as it is supposed to be in this moment — because in this moment, it can be no other way. Resisting what IS is our greatest source of misery.

{Byron Katie, you’re the shit.}

That profound realization led me to another:

Perfection and imperfection are nothing more than judgements — unevaluated stories disguised as “truth.”

And another:

I am the only one responsible for my actions, my reactions, my happiness and my suffering. No person or experience can make me feel anything I don’t choose.

Quite suddenly, by dropping the thought that the world is a troubled and messy place, I no longer carried the weight of it on my shoulders. My natural born tendencies toward idealism no longer obligated me to work toward positive change, but they equipped me. By seeing perfection as an arbitrary judgement and learning to embrace life in its current state, each moment was automatically infused with sufficiency. And by letting go of the thought that compromise equaled failure or weakness, it became not only my number one tool for staying centered, but the key to a realm of beauty I never knew existed.

I still very much think in terms of how things might or could be. It’s who I am. The difference is that because I see the sufficiency of now, I can function from a context of abundance instead of inadequacy, and consequently, I am more selective, effective and I love my life again.

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I’m not finished with this “compromise as a gateway to beauty” concept. I’ll be back next week with a few recent examples. See you then!