Shifting from Perfection to Presence

Wilted Flowers

These flowers on my kitchen counter are dying.

Their petals are curling like tiny fists and dropping like exhausted confetti, their stems brittle, their glory days gone. By Instagram standards, they’re trash—fit for the compost bin, not the camera roll.

But I love them all the same. They remind me that wonder doesn’t have to expire. That beauty doesn’t disappear when the bloom is over—it transforms. It lets go.

And maybe that’s the point: maybe life is not about desperately holding everything at its prime. Maybe it’s about learning to stay present as things shift, wrinkle, and fade—without pretending we can outrun it.

The Lie of Perfection

For too long, I pined after perfection. Believing that if I looked right, acted right, produced right—then I’d finally feel a sense of belonging. Finally loved. Finally enough.

But that’s all bullshit.

It’s a treadmill in high heels. Exhausting, humiliating, and impossible to maintain. It whispers: This moment doesn’t count until you fix it. Until you filter it. Until you’re flawless.

And while we chase that lie, life is happening without us. The messy, gorgeous, unfiltered life we’re desperate for is right here—passing us by while we edit the photo of the ticket stub instead of dancing wildly at the concert like no one is watching.

What Presence Knows

The wilting flowers remind me: presence is braver than perfection.

Presence says:

Look at what is, not what you wish it were.

Even here—especially here—there is beauty.

Don’t miss it.

Choosing the Shift

Shifting from perfection to presence isn’t a one-time epiphany. It’s not like you wake up one morning and boom—you’ve renounced perfection forever.

No. It’s slower than that. Softer. It’s a daily practice.

Letting yourself sit in the ugly mess over and over again and finding beauty not in what you planned, but in the process.

The Beauty of Impermanence

The flowers will keep fading. And so will we.

But that’s not the end of the story—it’s the heart of it.