Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

First off, the world's greatest poem--not written by Lamott, but quoted.

We Who Are Your Closest Friends
Phillip Lopate

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

(If that wasn't meant directly for me, I don't know what would be!)

-------------

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” 

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a terrible first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”

I love this next part.  She's talking about writing, but what she says is helpful in many other areas...

"It's easier if you believe in God, but not impossible if you don't.  If you believe, then this God of yours might be capable of relieving you of some of this perfectionism.  Still, one of the most annoying things about God is that he never just touches you with his magic wand, like Glinda the Good, and gives you what you want.  Like that would be so much skin off his nose.  But he might give you the courage or the stamina to write lots and lots of terrible first rafts, and then you'd learn that good second drafts can spring from these, and you'd see that big sloppy imperfect messes have value.  

"Now it might be that your God is an uptight, judgmental perfectionist, sort of like Bob Dole, or, for that matter, me.  But a priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves and guides you if you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.  If this is your God, maybe you need to blend in the influence of someone who is ever so slightly more amused by you, someone less anal.  David Byrne is good, for instance.  Gracie Allen is good.  Mr. Rogers will work."

“If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friend's early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, 'Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!” 

"There is ecstasy in paying attention.  You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation.  Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally, to see everything as an outward and visible sign of an inward, invisible grace...Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beaty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart...if you start to look around, you will start to see.

"To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has it's head up it's own rear--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one."

"The truth doesn't come out in bumper stickers."