It's easy in the age of social media to forget that what we admire most is goodness, not perfection.I grew up on the south side of Chicago, my dad's family being Irish and black, my mother's from a small town in Ohio. I came from a long line of miserable, mean, hard laborers. We were so blue collar that when I was a kid I used to dream of a town only teens lived in, only to grow up and realize that existed and it was called college. My family members are the most sensitive, insensitive people I've ever met in my life. How my grandfather could be so abusive but so easily hurt blows mind. Unfortunately, I took a lot of lessons in the meaning of strength from that example and have spent my twenties unlearning that. I always told myself it was okay to strive for perfection because it was my version of perfection. Living up to my own standards meant doing triage with my own emotions. I wasn't allowed to be upset over something I could fix. I didn't get to cry about a break up because I was working with clients at my job who were on the verge of being homeless. Perfection meant being strong and surviving at any cost, at the expense of myself and others. I encased myself in an aura of put-together untouchableness. In September of last year, I visited LA and hiked Runyon Canyon for the first time. Beauty unfurled before my very feet in the form of a piercingly blue sky and red earth dotted with lush, fertile flora. This trip was also a complete relinquishment of the carefully curated bubble of safety I had confined my life to, as I was traveling alone for the very first time. I was so open to accepting this experience into my heart that it cracked it right in two, leaving me completely exposed to feeling the world around me and being okay with pain in a way I had never let myself be in my life. Nearly a year later, I'm at a place where I feel the desire to revert back to feeling less. I want to seal it up and be less gracious, less understanding, less peaceful. How do I know if I am on the right path? Does it matter where this path of following goodness takes me? I'm trying to refocus on feeling the journey. The closest I ever came God was in a church in Paris. I was raised atheist and never looked up to adults or respected authority figures, having been exposed to their flaws at a very young age. Reverence was not something I truly felt before, but the cathedral threw back my head in awe as much as it bowed it. With age, I have softened towards religion. It must be nice to put yourself in someone else's hands. I like to imagine living in the 1300's when the cathedral was built and how remarkable it must have been to go from a cramped one room home to services in the largest building you'd ever seen. It may have been the only time people felt respite from strife as smothering as poverty and family demands. What did their life mean to them, all the people who lived and died in struggle? What did feeling the touch of reverence, and through that, God, bring to their short, difficult lives? Is it all worth it for those moments? We spend a lot of time creating rules for ourselves and nothing is quite so limiting as perfection. Perfection seems akin to evil in that it only has so much it can touch or be. There are a finite number of things in the universe to destroy. Goodness, on the other hand, is expansive. Goodness can grow in every direction. All the ways people can be good, the kindness my friends show me, it has the power to touch everything. Striving for perfection means creating lines and boxes to reach and fit into. I was living in a box I created. The nuances of the way we love, romantic or platonic, are the best illustrator of the expansiveness of goodness. My friends battered me with positive texts to talk me down when I was on the verge of having a panic attack at work in the fall. During my Halloween party, I told the person I was dating that I was overwhelmed and he offered not only to leave and grab us food, but also to hide out in a quiet area with me for as long as I needed to recuperate. My dad picked up me in his car to go out to eat. We settled down at a table and he said wait, did you hug me? We got up and hugged warmly in the middle of the restaurant. Those were all the best things that happened to me that week and none had anything to do with perfect or perfectionism, not the version I had created. Strength is not a powerful or memorable legacy, not without being mixed with courage or kindness. None of that would have touched me as much as I let it had I not stopped striving for whatever perfection I was seeking most of my life. I think it's time to not be afraid and accept that those moments make this entire thing worth it. That believing in the goodness and mercy of some God and letting it touch you from the light coming in through a stained glass window makes all the suffering worth it. That I can love unconditionally with no motive. That goodness is its own aimless gift.