You Are Perfect

copyright 2008 by Stefan Bolz

It happened on one of my recent evening walks. The path lead down a beautiful country road alongside a meandering stream, passing a pond that was completely still that time of day. The sun was just about to set, spilling its warm light into the trees behind me. As I walked, I thought about my life and all the things I had done and all the things I did not do. The projects I started and never finished. The relationships that came and went. Things I could have done differently. I should have gone to college, I think often. Actually, I did go to college - and stopped about 15 credits before graduation. I will finish one day, I am telling myself. I'm not unhappy in general. But there is this nagging feeling that I could, that I should have done something more with my life. Something substantial. Something accountable. I live uncomfortably way below my potential. At least that is part of what goes through my mind on any given day, just below the surface.

As I looked at the constant stream of thoughts which seemed to come out of nowhere as part of an endless chain of disturbing truths about myself, I suddenly - as if opening a door - had a completely different thought. This thought seemed very quiet, like the still pond at the end of my road. It didn't move. It didn't come nor did it disappear in a flash only to be substituted by another. It stayed. It radiated. Like a butterfly on an aircraft carrier. Amidst the chaos that was my conscious mind it stood.

"You are perfect".

It did not contradict all the other thoughts from before. It completely eliminated them altogether, without leaving a trace of them behind. "You are perfect". The power of this simple statement brought tears into my eyes. I started to sob. Walking down the road, my dog sniffing the ground next to me, I couldn't stop crying. I felt the absolute truth of this statement. I knew at that moment that it was true. That this was, in fact, the only truth about myself. The joy that accompanied it, the utter relief that whatever I had thought about myself prior, had no meaning at all, made me weep. "Don't change anything about yourself. For if you do, you are denying that you are perfect and you will give your thoughts a reality they do not have. Do not change anything. For if you do, you forget that there is nothing in you that needs to change."

This 'episode' lasted about two minutes before 'the others' came back. Twenty F-15 fighter jets landed on the aircraft carrier, completely unaware of the butterfly. The sound, in contrast, was deafening. The butterfly, however, wasn't even aware of them. Quietly and unmistakably, he continued his song: "You are perfect".

Who do I listen to? Who will I listen to? What do I want to believe about myself? What voice do I allow entrance into my mind? There are but two and only one of them is true.