My Life a Masterpiece

“Life, like drawing, is a series of corrections”

Kathleen Ditmore, wonderful sister and friend.

I’ve always struggled with the big picture. I’m a details sort of girl. I’m not good at picking vacation spots, but once someone makes the call I’m the one that organizes it down to the final check mark. I am good at details, but honestly the view from the detail seats is pretty limited. I see only what is in front of me. So if problems are in front of me, there are only problems. If obstacles are in front of me then all I see are obstacles. It can make life overwhelming to say the least. This line of thinking reminds me of the expression “The devil is in the details”. I believe that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to just throw up my hands in sheer frustration when confronted by long list of details that must be considered in order for a plan to go forward.

When I think of details I’m reminded of paint by number kits. I can remember getting those as a child and then having to figure out which number corresponded to which color. I would then spend painstaking hours filling in all the 4’s with navy and the 2’s with yellow. Slowly and a bit sloppily, a picture would eventually appear. It wasn’t until it was finished that I could actually see where I had made my mistakes, but those were usually fairly easy to correct. Sometimes I chose not to correct it. I liked it better a little different from the image on the box. I could stand back and look at it. I could see the big picture comprised of a thousand little details.

I think that is what is missing at times from my life. I just don’t step back and look at the big picture. I get hung up on all the details. I get too focused on trying to make my life look like the picture on the box. The picture on the box is just the example. It has nothing to do with how my life should look. For a detail person, like myself, that thought is a little frightening. How could I possibly know if I’m getting it right or wrong, if I don’t have some guidelines to compare my life with, how do I know if I’m on track? I wondered around asking myself this question for years until I finally realized that being on track is less about the detail concept of rules and instead more about the big picture concept of faith.

Don’t get scared and click off, running from a religious fanatic, I’m not a Bible thumper, well, not anymore. No, I am done with rigid religion and manmade denominational rules. I still believe in God minus all the made up control bullshit. I look at the big picture of Christ or Buddha or well, insert the prophet of your choice here. Unlike in my day to day “to do list” list, I don’t get bogged down in the detail of my faith, I don’t waste a lot of time trying to follow every conflicting rule. I’m not deluded into believing that I can ever get it all right or be perfect. In fact, Jesus said for me to come to him like a child. Well then, how could I have ever believed that God expects perfection if He asked me to come as a child. Children make messes, they fall down, they ask silly questions, and they tear their clothing, and occasionally spill their milk. They say the wrong things for the right reasons. Children are imperfect and I’m a child of God. Seeing this big picture has made my life a lot easier. That old Bible thumper I alluded to above, she was very much lost in the details and missing the point.

It was during those years of perfecting myself and my faith that I felt pressure from religion. At twenty I truly bought into that crap, I believed that if I tried hard enough that in time I would reach the point of perfect faith. Now at 44 I know perfection is impossible. Luckily, I have also come to understand that God never expected perfection, man demands perfection, God adores the imperfect, the unique, and the flawed. God adores me. Yep, the woman who forgets to say her prayers, who eats steak from time to time when there are hungry people in this world, who wears green with blue and overprotects everyone she loves. Yep, God loves me. Why? There is no why. That is the biggest trick of all. We spend our lives asking why but there is no why. It just is. He just is. Life just is. It isn’t about understanding any of it. It is about living it.

I think that God is in the details and God is in the big picture. God is in all of it. In the midst of my detail driven insanity, God pulls me out of my chair and asks me to open my eyes and see the big picture. The colorful, textured, vibrant portrait of my life, it isn’t perfect. It isn’t even close. It’s obvious when I look at it that I used some green where the yellow was supposed to go, the red isn’t quite right and the white and black are far too close together, but that’s okay. I’m okay. “Life like drawing is a series of corrections”, according to my sister and I believe that is true. I’m a process and this is my masterpiece, fully imperfect, and fully alive. I don’t look like the picture on the box and that is a very good thing.

Ta-Dah

“And for my next trick, I’ll pretend to be someone that I’m not, so that maybe you might like me more.”

I used to be the life of the party. My smile never left my face. I know this because for days after an event my jaws would ache. I used to leave parties exhausted. Not from any physical exertion, I mean how much effort does it take to stand around with a drink in my hand and nod, no my exhaustion was the result of the effort it required for me to be “on” all night. I’m not an “on” person. In fact, I am quite comfortable now admitting that in most ways I’m very much off in my thinking, but that is another entry altogether. I’m actually a rather shy and quiet person, but somewhere along the way I learned that being shy and reserved isn’t as desirable as extroverted and entertaining. I can’t be sure where this quirky, comic relief part of me came into being, but I suspect that perhaps it developed in the commercial spots between Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch. I learned many of my social skills from Days of Our Lives, Dynasty, Dallas and Knots Landing. No wonder there is so much drama in my life.

Being a natural born people pleaser and social chameleon, skills honed through generations of genetic refinement, I was able to adapt my personality to whatever the situation required. Naturally, as a result, I’ve avoided parties much like lobbyists avoid audits. It’s a shame too, because parties can be a lot of fun whether a person is the life of it or well, not the life. I refuse to think of myself as the death of a party. No, that is usually the person who brings their vacation slides. No, I’m not the death of the party just more comfortable listening instead of talking.

Many times I can be mistaken for the help. I tend to hide in kitchens, washing up glasses, getting the next tray ready to take out, even serving, so I have something to do instead of trying to make small talk. Did I mention that I suck at small talk? No? Well, I suck at small talk. I usually find one thing out about someone and then repeat their answer back to them over and over again varying it slightly hoping they might not realize I’m stuck in an infinite loop. After a while even they are bored with their children’s occupations, or the great deal they got on their car, or what color they painted their house.

I’m finding that so much of life is about expectations. When I look out and accept what I believe are the world’s expectations without factoring in my own unique skills and quirks, I’m destined to feel like a fish out of water, the odd man out, the exhausted party guest who keeps looking at the clock and wishing it was time to leave. I’m not smooth. I’m not polished. I’m not Alexis Carrington, beaded gown, professional make-up, “I’m a tramp and I like me” confidence. I’m not J.R plotting and planning and always trying to sum up a room to my advantage. I’m not someone who cares what fork a person uses or if they put the salad plate in the right spot on the place setting. I am just a guest invited into someone’s home. What I forget is that I am the person that was invited and so it’s okay for me to be myself. It’s okay for me to be the real person I am. I’m the one setting up the performance expectation, not the host. I’m the one trying to replicate a scene from a fictional “B” television series mistaking it for a reality show.   It's not the world's expectations that are the issue.  It is my interpretation of those and the assumption that I'm to conform to them.

I can’t always distinguish between the performers and audience members at a party. The truth is that some people are just naturally outgoing. Some people do feel at ease in a crowd. It is important though that I realize I’m not alone. There are others out there in the crowd, glancing at their watches and searching for excuses so that they can escape to the comfort of the kitchen, out of the spotlight where purpose replaces personality and tasks jump start small talk which eventually evolves into conversation. This is where the introverts hang out, like the dark corner of the gym at prom, this is our stage and where we can practice being ourselves. Life ain’t so tragic in the kitchen or that corner. It’s actually pretty nice there, safe, comfortable, and a home away from home.

“Ta Dah, and for my next trick I will be myself, no applause required.”