Friday: Lowered Expectations
You got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.
As I wrote in my muse this morning, I had a friend who collected frogs. She had glass frogs, wood frogs, green frogs, metal frogs and about as many different shapes and sizes of frogs that one could imagine. I asked her one day, why do you collect frogs? She looked at me and laughed and said: I got my first frog when the fellow I thought was my Prince Charming turned out to be a frog. Then every time I would have a break up with one of my perceived dream lovers, I would buy another frog. That woman had at least 30 frogs. Now that takes a lot of kissing of a lot of frogs. She was still single but ever optimistic that one of those frogs was going to turn into her Prince Charming.
I learned a lot from this woman but mostly I learned about how we set ourselves up in about every situation in life. Basically she did not want to be in a long-term relationship and by focusing on obtaining the impossible she is going to end up a very lonely person with a big frog collection.
It is so easy in life to create a thought pattern about how we want something so perfect that it is impossible to achieve. We never really have to face the reality of dealing with what we want to avoid if we keep up the illusion that what we want some how does exist and keep chasing after the impossible dream in quixotic manner. It is easier to tilt a few windmills rather than face the dragons that we truly fear.
Before I retired from Ohio University, I knew a professor in the English Department. He had been writing the definitive book about Shelley. He worked for twenty years on this project. He finally completed it, had the manuscript neatly typed up, placed in a box and headed to the train station to take his bible of Shelley to his publisher. As he waited for the train, he was truly in a panic. He turned around with his boxed up manuscript and went home. When people asked what happened, he said it just isn’t perfect yet. Three months later he killed himself.
When one is not happy with life and with the events surrounding one perhaps the one thing one needs to do is to lower one’s expectations about perfection. I am a total believer in lowered expectations. If when I wrote I could not publish or submit a manuscript or article if I did not accept the fact that it would never be perfect in my mind. I also had to accept the fact that no matter how perfect it was in my eyes, some people would just think it stinks. So I just go slashing and burning my way through the art of writing and enjoying the process. Now I have to admit that I would dearly love to have a few books on the New York Times best seller list. I would love to be on Oprah waxing pedantic about my philosophies of life and sell a million copies of my books. It could happen and it might even happen. But, in the mean time I have lowered my expectations and I enjoy just being a writer.
Also, I have learned that kissing frogs can sometimes be fun.
As I wrote in my muse this morning, I had a friend who collected frogs. She had glass frogs, wood frogs, green frogs, metal frogs and about as many different shapes and sizes of frogs that one could imagine. I asked her one day, why do you collect frogs? She looked at me and laughed and said: I got my first frog when the fellow I thought was my Prince Charming turned out to be a frog. Then every time I would have a break up with one of my perceived dream lovers, I would buy another frog. That woman had at least 30 frogs. Now that takes a lot of kissing of a lot of frogs. She was still single but ever optimistic that one of those frogs was going to turn into her Prince Charming.
I learned a lot from this woman but mostly I learned about how we set ourselves up in about every situation in life. Basically she did not want to be in a long-term relationship and by focusing on obtaining the impossible she is going to end up a very lonely person with a big frog collection.
It is so easy in life to create a thought pattern about how we want something so perfect that it is impossible to achieve. We never really have to face the reality of dealing with what we want to avoid if we keep up the illusion that what we want some how does exist and keep chasing after the impossible dream in quixotic manner. It is easier to tilt a few windmills rather than face the dragons that we truly fear.
Before I retired from Ohio University, I knew a professor in the English Department. He had been writing the definitive book about Shelley. He worked for twenty years on this project. He finally completed it, had the manuscript neatly typed up, placed in a box and headed to the train station to take his bible of Shelley to his publisher. As he waited for the train, he was truly in a panic. He turned around with his boxed up manuscript and went home. When people asked what happened, he said it just isn’t perfect yet. Three months later he killed himself.
When one is not happy with life and with the events surrounding one perhaps the one thing one needs to do is to lower one’s expectations about perfection. I am a total believer in lowered expectations. If when I wrote I could not publish or submit a manuscript or article if I did not accept the fact that it would never be perfect in my mind. I also had to accept the fact that no matter how perfect it was in my eyes, some people would just think it stinks. So I just go slashing and burning my way through the art of writing and enjoying the process. Now I have to admit that I would dearly love to have a few books on the New York Times best seller list. I would love to be on Oprah waxing pedantic about my philosophies of life and sell a million copies of my books. It could happen and it might even happen. But, in the mean time I have lowered my expectations and I enjoy just being a writer.
Also, I have learned that kissing frogs can sometimes be fun.
posted by Myriam Maytorena | 7:34 AM
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