As I say, I’m a recovering perfectionist turned good-enoughist.
As much as I’ve worked hard to get to place where I believe my imperfections don’t equal inadequacies, there are still those times when I so desperately want to appear perfect and I choose to save face.
Saving face is saying one thing while feeling something entirely different. Rather that allowing someone to see you, the wall goes up. The wall is a response or a behaviour that guards your truth. The wall makes damn sure that who you really are is not put on for display and presents something that’s not at all real. It’s showtime.
Saving face runs rampant in our society. We want to be cool. Being cool is well, not cool. While trying desperately to appear cool, we’re missing out on being ourselves and having pure, inspiring, passionate connections with other human beings. Saving face is preventing us from being who we really are which sucks since that’s why we’re here having this human experience in the first place.
Oh, and it’s quite a show that we put on. We feel crushed, or jealous, or sorry for ourselves, or just plain angry. Inside we’re feeling something born out fear. With some version of fear swirling inside of us, we then say to our co-worker, our friend, our mother, our lover, “Me? I’m good. I’m totally fine…really.” All the while are so not fine. We want to say something else, but we don’t because our pain is not a good look. We don’t want to openly admit to our feelings because our ego has led us to believe that imperfect reaction is not an option as imperfections equal inadequacy.
No. It just means we’re human, damn it.
But we suffer in silence. And in the silence resentment builds. Resentment is the death of connection. The plight of the perfectionist.
Saving face is a sign that self-acceptance is still on the table waiting to be dealt with. Acceptance of self and of anybody or anything else is born out of letting go of expectations. May I and all the other recovering perfectionists let go of the expectations we have of ourselves to be a certain way because that’s what we should be thinking, saying, and feeling. May we accept the facts of our humanity. We humans are unique, we are emotional, and we are imperfect.
Not unlike all the other aspects of “awakened” living, vulnerability is a practice. A daily practice. The opportunities to let our guard down and allow people to really, truly see us lies in accepting the fourth fact of humanity and that is we humans have an innate desire to protect our sense of self. When the wall is going up, we merely notice it and then make a shift with this question: What would love have me say in this moment?
As one of my favourite spiritual authors, Neale Donald Walsch, once said, “The mind is the last part of yourself to listen to. It thinks of everything you can lose. The heart thinks of everything you can give and the soul thinks of everything you are.”
May we stop saving face because we’re so afraid to lose our sense of self. That small-minded self that feeds off the illusion that we’re not lovable just the way we are.
Next time you think it’s showtime, choose love. Choose to be fear-less. When you catch yourself in the “act” and choose open-hearted and truthful living, you will be opening up to a beautiful sense of connection that you may very well have been waiting your whole life for.