02 Oct What if we aimed to be happy-ish more than 100% happy?!?!
Many years ago, when my children were younger, my wife and I discovered a fantastic series of books that we must have read to our kids (and to ourselves) hundreds and hundreds of times.
Peter H Reynolds (HERE) is a Canadian author and illustrator who’s published widely. We have several in our collection but the one I want to focus on today is called “Ish”.
At the risk of oversimplifying, and I wont’ even attempt to summarise the whole story or message, but basically, Ish is the story of a child who loves to draw but gets teased by a sibling because the drawings aren’t perfect. They are, however, close enough and beautiful in their own way so the young artist learns to see them as -ish; that is, a vase is vase-ish, a flower is flower-ish etc.
You may wall already be able to see the core, and important message, but if not, I’ll spell it out. Ish is all about accepting imperfections, accepting life in all it’s glorious beauty even if it’s not 100% as we’d like it.
It’s a super important message to teach children but it’s also a super important message for us to remind ourselves of on a regular basis.
It’s very rare that we’ll ever get anything, or many things, 100% right 100% of the time; but we can get them right-ish.
We can’t be happy all the time but we can be happy-ish (much of the time).
Most of us aren’t super-models but we are beautiful-ish, we can be success-ish, and, well, I think you get the message.
This post them is all about setting and working towards more REALISTIC expectations, of ourselves and of life. By doing so we’re far more likely to enjoy happiness, even if it’s not a perfect happiness, and we’re far more likely to enjoy life in all it’s wonderful messiness!