There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen
In fact, if I think of myself as a pot for a plant, I’m not a nice pristine pot with a crack in it. I’m more of a pot with multiple cracks, pieces missing on the top and dirt spilling out on the sides. I don’t need to worry about the light getting in, I need to worry about all of the dirt falling out.
And that’s how you take a metaphor too far…
We all have cracks in ourselves or our lives. We all have parts of ourselves that feel, in some way, broken. And many of us, myself included, react to those cracks with criticism, shame, and disgust. We are embarrassed that we even have those cracks in the first place.
We spend our lives trying to hide or ignore or fix those cracks, and then feel disgusted with ourselves when we can’t.
But what if, right now, in this one moment, you could accept yourself exactly as you are? Nothing to change, no need to do more or be more or try harder.
We fall into a pattern of self-judgement about all of the things that we are not. We live in a place of never being enough. Nothing that we do is ever enough because we don’t even know what enough is. Our culture doesn’t teach us what it means to feel satisfied. If you stop right now for just one moment, can you think about what would help you feel like you are enough? That you are doing enough?
Yesterday in a conversation with a client who is working on a career change, she talked about all of the things that aren’t happening in the process. But when I asked her what she was doing, there were a lot of actions that are propelling her forward. But the self-judgement about what’s not happening felt all-consuming and understandably frustrating for her.
We live in a culture where it becomes difficult to recognize what’s going well because we learn – we absorb into the very fabric of our being – that we are not enough. That what we’ve done is not enough. That there is always more.
And it is that self-judgement that keeps us trapped. It’s the constant stream of self-criticism that keeps us in what Buddhists call a trance. And it can be difficult to break that trance.
I’ve been re-visiting the book “Radical Acceptance,” by Tara Brach, a Buddhist teacher and psychologist, so working on acceptance is top of mind right now for me.
The book addresses feelings of deficiency that for so many of us, are right around the corner. For so many of us, it doesn’t take much more than hearing about someone else’s accomplishments or successes to go spiraling down the rabbit hole of all of the things that we are not.
But it’s that rabbit hole where the real suffering happens.
I don’t have an answer on how to break the trance of that harsh self-judgement. Try to notice it. Try to acknowledge it.
And because I like sticky notes, write this down somewhere that you can read it:
In this moment, right now, I am enough.
Because you are.