Being Your Best Self

"... an unperfect actor on the stage" — Wm. Shakespeare 

I was reading through a book of sonnets this past weekend and this one line spoke to me. 

It's the perfect epitaph really, for those who are self-aware.

I am indeed 'unperfect'.  No one knows this better than I. My shortcomings are legion—an inherent laziness, a secret selfishness, a time-waster and day-dreamer, a procrastinator, judgmental at times and impatient.  Indeed, the burden of my failings weighs heavily at times. 

I look around at those who are almost inhumanly good—cheerful, patient, trusting, hopeful, kind, accepting, productive, on time, organized—and I realize that I cannot possibly measure up to them.  The expectation of perfection is simply too high and too daunting. 

But then I stop and wonder if they, too, have a secret list of failings.  I'm sure they do.  That is the human condition after all.

And so, in the end, all you can do is try your best.  And be yourself.  Because being yourself, as they say, is a tough act to follow.

Carry on.