WEEKLY MEDITATION
The desire for perfection is that desire which always makes pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in your soul.
-Dante
The purpose of addiction recovery is to become aware of, and ultimately let go of, anything that blocks us from the potential to be the most comfortable with our experience of life as we can be. Of the many pursuits that will create consistent emotional discomfort in life, the pursuit of perfection may be the most dangerous. The pursuit of perfection is rooted in the feeling of not being deeply validated and supported, and the associated erroneous belief that one must be perfect to be deserving of these basic emotional needs. Since perfection is not possible to achieve, however, its pursuit will inevitably lead to disappointment and feelings of futility—not to the experience of feeling loved. It is much better, then, to explore the beliefs behind this misguided chase so that not only can the pursuit of perfection be dropped, but so that one can also be free to create other, more realistic and attainable paths to feelings of deserving and adequacy. As today’s quotation explains, too, when perfection is dropped as a goal, the potential to feel deeper pleasure increases dramatically, and the deeper self is much more likely to be satisfied, thus decreasing the need for addictive behaviors.
