Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living

by Shauna Niequist

By Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain Are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

I loved my life, but I had become someone I didn’t want to be around. I had become someone I didn’t want to be.

those skills I developed that supposedly served me well for the first half, as I inspect them a little more closely, didn’t actually serve me at all. They made me responsible and capable and really, really tired. They made me productive and practical, and inch by inch, year by year, they moved me further and further from the warm, whimsical person I used to be … and I missed her.

if someone gave you a completely blank calendar and a bank account as full as you wanted, what would you do? The

Who told me that keeping everything organized would deliver happiness? What a weird prescription for happiness. Why do I think managing our possessions is a meaningful way of spending my time? Why do I think clean countertops means anything at all?

And I know that activity—any activity—keeps me from feeling, so that becomes a drug, too.

People called me tough. And capable. And they said I was someone they could count on. Those are all nice things. Kind of. But they’re not the same as loving, or kind, or joyful. I was not those things.

I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. —F. Scott Fitzgerald

We were all raised to build, build, build. Bigger is better, more is better, faster is better. It had never occurred to us, in church-building or any other part of life, that someone would intentionally keep something small, or deliberately do something slow.

And there’s a difference between forsaking a friendship or family relationship and speaking the truth about our limitations. I’m finding that many of our friendships actually grow when we’re more honest about what we can and can’t do.

I remind myself: This will not make me feel loved, so if that’s why I’m saying yes, that’s not a good reason. The love I want will not be found here, and what I will feel in its place is resentment and anger.

Some people, apparently, feel solid and loved and secure, in their most inside, secret parts. WHAT?

you don’t get the oil until you pour out the vinegar.