The Imperfect Post for Perfectionists

           In I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Birthmark, and The Yellow Wallpaper the common theme seems to be the push and pressure to be perfect. In I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth, the speaker wants to be able to see the daffodils that he once saw dancing in the breeze but he is stuck at home on his couch so he is not able to see the daffodils he is only able to imagine them. The perfection that he saw before and for which he longed for again was not able to be seen at the time so he had to be disappointed. In The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aylmer notices a birthmark on the cheek of his wife, Georgiana, and it bothers him because this is the only imperfection he sees of her, this upsets Aylmer so much that he is determined to change that and get rid of the birthmark. The constant though of her imperfection affecting her husband causes Georgiana to want to get rid of the birthmark as much as her husband wants it gone, this ultimately leads to her downfall. And in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator’s husband John tells her that she is sick and that she cannot do anything simply because he says she needs to get better. He wants her to be absolutely perfect when he is the one causing her to be imperfect by not allowing her to do much of anything.

            In my Meditation session with Dr. Davis I was able to see patterns similar to those in all three of these writings. Similar to The Birthmark, I was able to see that many of us in our lives are told to search for perfection, but the perfection we are told to find is the one that others tell us to find, it is not the one we should look for ourselves. Through the meditation session I was able to realize that no matter what we do, there is something we can work on to become better. In meditation that could be posture or sitting position, or trying to remain still whether it be keeping your mind, body, or spirit still. But it is up to us to make those attributes of ourselves better, we will not have someone else do it for us. It is up to us to keep ourselves motivated to improve, we cannot count on others to be our rock simply because, if others become our rocks, then we have no steady foundation for ourselves and we will eventually crumble in the end just like Georgiana did when she listened to the opinion of her husband and she ended up dying.

            Similar to The Yellow Wallpaper, I realized during meditation how difficult it is to remain still and not do anything. Like in the short story I was put in a room and told I could do practically nothing just like the narrator was. While I will say, I did feel better after meditation, like my legs hurt before but they felt great after, I do not think it is completely healthy to try to remain still and sit around and do nothing. And thinking about imperfections while doing nothing else is very strenuous, it is almost impossible to not try and think about those imperfections when you are trying to be still or do nothing. Then because you are thinking of those imperfections they seem to become huge and they are the only thing that you focus on for that time being. Personally I had to focus on my posture and my stillness very much during the meditation and because of that I was only able to focus on posture and stillness for most of the meditation. Stillness was very hard because I am a very active person and I do not like being still.

            Like I stated earlier the speaker of the poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, was disappointed that he could not see the daffodils in real life but rather he had to imagine them. In meditation, we cannot actually be in the place we imagine, so we try to make the environment around us as peaceful as possible to make it easy to imagine we are in the place that we want to be. It is upsetting because we actually are not in our happy place but the thought of being in a better peaceful place is good and adds to the possibility of perfection.

            Overall meditation was a good experience this past week and I am excited to go back next week. I know that we all have imperfections that we have to work on, but we have to work on those imperfections by choice. We do not want to be forced or brainwashed to fix our imperfections. And we need to know that what we think of inside can make us a better or worse person based off of how you think of it.