🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

🪴 I started a tradition on LinkedIn of sharing a poem each week—one that has touched me in some way—and offering a few reflections on it. And, I decided that I wanted to carry that same practice into my blog as well, as a way of creating a more lasting space for these moments of reflection.

This week’s poem is called The Ideal.

It touched me deeply because it echoed a recent conversation I had—one that reminded me how fragile our self-image can be, and how profoundly that fragility shapes our sense of self-worth.

THE IDEAL

🌻 This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.

This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard. 🌻

— James Fenton,
published in The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart

It pains me when a client comes into coaching saying they don’t like who they are—that they see no beauty in themselves, even though I can see it so clearly.

Weighted down by the image of an “Ideal Self”, they are unable or unwilling to accept their past, to accept who they are. And so, paradoxically, every attempt they make to become someone else fails. The pursuit of that ideal becomes a self-imposed tyranny that only brings even more pain.

In Gestalt, we call this the Paradox of Change. Only when I come to terms with and accept myself as I am—and my past as it was—can I finally move into new directions and let go of the thoughts that have dragged me down for so long.

🪴 But self-acceptance, and even more so self-forgiveness, can be incredibly hard.

Guilt over something we did or said can become such a visceral, embodied feeling that it’s hard to believe it can ever be overcome.

Fenton suggests that while we may keep our ideal in mind, our past is not something we need to hide from—whether from ourselves or others. We are who we are today because of, or despite, that past. It is not something to be ashamed of, for it has made us who we are: “This is where I came from. I passed this way.” And for some of us, it might even be: “I survived this way.”

He goes on to reject that self-imposed screen we use to project ourselves to the world. He invites us to embrace who we are in this moment. However flawed our past or present self may be, it deserves to be, because it’s real. “A self is a self”.

He also suggests that growing or bettering ourselves does not require erasure. “This is my past which I shall not discard.”

And he ends the poem with “This is the ideal. This is hard.”

It is hard because that ideal often fails to acknowledge our humanity, our shortcomings. It is an image of perfection no human can achieve—and so it can only generate more disappointment and more pain.

It is hard because it places guilt and shame as the birthplace of change. And while feelings of regret are allowed to be, the true birthplace of a new self can only be forgiveness…

I find myself tearing up as I re-read my words for a final check before hitting “publish”… which tells me that I, too, still need to accept… and forgive.

📌 Which parts of yourself or your past have you been shunning?

What can you forgive today?

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋

With love,
Dina 🫶🏽

Recommended resources: 

• Article on the Paradox of Change by Arnold Beisser