I remember being both puzzled and pained by my report cards in public school. With rare exceptions (most of them in the "works well with others" category) I received my school’s equivalent of A’s. Yet, every report period the comment section always included some words about how I "could do better."
Each time, though feeling somewhat deflated, I returned to my schoolwork with intensified zeal. I kept hoping my teachers would some day acknowledge that I was doing my best. It never happened. Always, along with the profusion of A’s, there would be some note about how I "could do better." And, always, I would think that, despite how it felt inside of me, maybe I really hadn’t done my best or done enough after all.
Years later, I got 99 and 97 on my New York State Regents exams in high school chemistry and advanced algebra. When my parents asked me "what happened to the other four points?" it didn’t feel like the "joke" they meant it to be.
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When I was 32, I suddenly ran out of "mores" I could imagine doing! In a very magical and profound moment of "Aha!" I understood that all the "mores" in the world wouldn’t be enough to prove that I was "truly" doing my "best," that I was "enough." For the first time I saw that it was the standard of measure I’d learned that was at fault, not me! I saw that I had learned never to see anything I had already done as either my best or enough, merely because I had already done it!
I had been conditioned by the bizarre but mostly unquestioned cultural notion that praise (our own or anyone else’s) gives us an inflated sense of ourselves. That praise encourages us to "rest complacently on our laurels" while intimations that we "could do better" keep us motivated. This conditioning had left me unable to recognize that I was always doing the best I could. And, it left me also unable to recognize that I was doing the best I could because that was and is my very nature!
We are not, any of us, (as that conditioning would lead us to believe) lazy slugs who would never do anything in our lives were it not for external prodding and fear of censure. Our true nature moves always and inevitably toward growth and unfolding. The odd bends and twists that our growing takes have mostly to do with our beings’ attempts to survive and thrive in the face of imposed obstacles…like the shapes of trees that twist and bend to reach toward the light in a crowded forest.
It is in our basic nature always to do the best we can with the capacities and consciousness we have available to us at each moment. As our capacities and consciousness evolve and grow, our best will grow better, too. Acknowledging and celebrating all the baby steps along the way helps to richly nourish our unfolding.
Remember to remind yourself that you’re always doing the best you can in this moment.
Be really loving and tender with your in-this-moment self.
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.
Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!
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