tightrope illusion

It feels quite suffocating to try to live life without making one mistake.

The tightrope is wide enough for our feet, but we gotta step with our utmost concentration. 

One stutter step, and we plummet.

Can't take the wrong class (or the wrong professor for the right class). Can't say the awkward thing. Can't smile too eagerly at a new face. Can't wear those shoes to this event (might not be demure, after all). Can't wave too enthusiastically at a new friend. Can't pick the wrong major. Can't shoot your shot with your crush wrongly. Can't drop a fork on the floor.

"Don't grab

Don't clutch

Don't hope for too much

Don't breathe

Don't achieve

Don't grieve without leave" -Numb

Picture this: you're babysitting your older sibling's toddler. They start to take steps and walk while holding onto the edge of a couch. But instead of a normal, encouraging response, this is what you say instead: "You just now figured this out?!? What a joke. Hey, look at me walk. It's a lot better, isn't it? Compared to me, you suck at walking."

If I could invent an unsustainable, crushing way to live, demanding perpetual self-perfection would be a part of it. 

Perfection sucks. Pursuing perfection paralyzes everything else. Let's instead aim for progress. Progress, when consistently pursued, can become excellence.

Progress advances in leaps, 

...in stutter steps, 

...in failures because we tried, 

...in inches, 

...in depth, 

...and/or in setbacks we learn from. 

Any of those advances counts as progress.

So why do we so often not notice progress even when we accomplish it? 

Maybe we're looking too closely at it, like trying to assess our own eye exam. You can either look into the phoroptor, or you can assess externally ... but you can't do both at the same time. 

It's as hard to notice our progress as it is to notice (without a mirror) when we have a tiny piece of food stuck in our front teeth.

We gotta trust the external feedback when it tells us, "yo, you got something caught up there in your chompers" and also when they say "yo, you are making progress, even though it doesn't feel like it. I can see it."

Numb (song by U2)