A Place for Grace

Achievement dreams are as natural as hero worship.

I remember when Nick, my then four year old grandson, spent hours, days, years, pretending to be a Ninja Turtle. He made decisive moves, saving the day against the bad guys. In each encounter he led the winning team. When down for the count, his bulging arms reached for glistening weapons at his side. He hit his mark. No matter what the odds, he arose and conquered.

Though no one told me, a girl, I could be or do anything significant, I invented a few dreams for myself. Some day, after disking the wheat field, I would leave the Minneapolis-Moline behind, disappear into the house and, like Cowgirl Kate, emerge again as a ravishing beauty in a subtly seductive pink dress filled out with a can-can and a well endowed chest. A few years later I regularly metamorphosed into a new Janice Joplin. Still later I secretly transformed into a female William Faulkner.

We can dress up our flaws, tame them, or trade them, but perfection needs often make us picky, unforgiving, vicious with ourselves, and single minded. With few exceptions, life eventually teaches us to abandon hero/heroine dreams, to face our foibles, and come to terms with being ordinary.

It’s inspiring to live in a state of grace; being content, enjoying humanness, and celebrating being good enough without being the best.

Our Ninja feats will have to wait for another life-time.

In the end, we find an odd twist of fate. Our inadequacies are not the bitter enemies we once thought. It is freeing, after all, to discover we are human and embrace it for the first time, to know the joys of sauntering and smelling roses, to discover contentment resting peacefully in our bellies, and to exhale laughter about things we can’t change.