The Perfect Self-Care Crime

Wake-Up Call #4

My finger hovers over the button. 

A solid 30-seconds.

Left shoulder devil:

Just do it!
You know you’ve earned it.
Plus, it’s untraceable.
The perfect self-care crime!

Right shoulder conscience:

Dude, really, it’s come to this?

The button, as it happens, is at the bottom of the “add session” screen on my meditation app. It lets you backfill a meditation session completed outside the hallowed confines of the app, where you accumulate little blue, green, gold, and red stars for hitting certain milestones, like streaks. 

Ten days in a row, gold star. Fives golds get a red. Five reds gets a green. A hundred greens gets you a blue. Or something like that.

Backfilling or manually entering “outside” sessions lets you get credit for the days where you meditate outside on a rock, riding the subway, in a meeting (sure, it wasn’t a nap). It' lets you keep your star streak going.

And, here’s the thing…

I’ve got a lot of stars. Like a bazillion more than I ever got doing chores around the house, or cleaning the chalkboard in fifth-grade. Been meditating and tracking them in this one app for over a decade. Don’t need to prove anything to anyone, including myself.

Plus, gamification and meditation? Please. I’m so above that kind of newbie crutch.

And, yet….

496 days into a streak. Not. One. Day. Missed. A super-human, 8 green-star, 2 red-star, 4 yellow-star, 70,000-minute meditation mogul. Four friggin’ days from 500, where some kind of post-enlightenment, Nutella-slathered anointing surely awaits. No conceivable way to blow this now.

It happens. The unthinkable.

A three-day cluster headache. 

Day one, still meditate. I got this. I make the pounding my mantra. Star, check.

Day two. DEFCON-10-level pain in the middle of the night. Rock and breathe. Try not to hurl. Sunrise. Time to meditate. I sit. It’s just too much. Can’t. Do. It. I rock and pace all day, waiting for the lightning in my head to lift. 

Day three. Still suffering, but improved enough to take my seat. Meditation, or something a less judgy meditator would call meditation ensues. I log it in the app. Star, check.

But, I’m now faced with a moral dilemma. 

That button, the one that lets me backfill yesterday’s session and keep the streak alive. Barreling toward star-studded, meditation immortality, or at least demi-goddery. It’s calling me. Taunting. Bellowing.

Dude. Keep the streak alive.

Hit. The. Fucking. Button!

No one will ever know.

I sit poised and ready. To cheat on my meditation app. But, really, on me.

Its a bit like telling your therapist “of course I’ve been doing those sunrise breathing exercises,” when your dog knows you’ve been doomscrolling Apple News with a side of sesame bagel and sheet crumbs.

Rationalization kicks in.

I did spend a lot of time rocking back-and-forth and breathing deeply. That’s gotta count. Right? What about medical dispensation? Don’t I get a gimme for being “present” in my pain? I mean, isn’t that what meditation is all about?

At some point, I’m sure I was focused on my breath. Or, maybe just trying not to vomit. Close enough, right? I paced a lot, isn’t that like the moving meditation I did that one time on retreat?

MUST. GET. CREDIT. STREAK. IS. LIFE. TOO. CLOSE. TO. FAIL!!!

Seriously? I think. It’s come to this?

My finger floats above the button.

Shouldn’t the fact that I’m a meditator, with a long, devout practice have made me immune to this kind of lunacy? Shouldn’t this just not matter at all to me?

Turns out, nope.

I’m helpless against the Siren-call of stars that no one but me will ever see. 

Still, I want my damn stars.

I SUFFERED for my stars!

I start laughing. 

This, in fact, is a test.

Part of my meditation is, and has always been, about letting go. Accepting what is.

The very practice that’s given me the skills to see myself and the world more clearly and let go of what doesn’t serve me is asking whether I have to will to walk away from a year-and-a-half-long streak—the identity of a “perfectly committed’ meditator—and not lie to myself. In the name of moving on and coming back to what matters.

So, I sit, and reconnect to a deeper stillness. To that calm, grounded “I’ve got this” vibe I’ve been cultivating for years. To the wisdom of the moment.

And I choose…

…

…

…

To hit the button!

…

…

…

#kidding! ;-) 

But, you wouldn’t have been surprised right?

Because that’s what we do. Over. And over. And over.

We choose the obsessive pursuit of perfection over the grace of compassion. Even when no one is looking but us.

In truth, I close the app. The streak is over. 498 goes to 0.

Such a simple thing. I’m medi-defeated, but also feel like I won a minor battle.

Not just about integrity, but agency. And, beneath that, a bent toward perfection I thought I’d left behind long ago. Especially in a part of my life that literally is, by design, about helping me make peace with anything but. Apparently, the drive remains alive and well.

This seemingly insignificant moment is a signal. That I can forgive and maybe even embrace my humanity and fallibility. And, maybe even laugh about it.

It’s a reminder that my inner guidance system is still loaded with a handful of missiles of obsession and perfection. Every once in a while, in the weirdest of ways, one’ll drop into the chamber and try to take control. And I’ll have another opportunity to consider whether I want to be the kind of person who is led by these lesser impulses, or who is okay with being human, and looks to a set of more forgiving metrics to figure out how I’m doing.

Strange, these little moments, and what they tell us about ourselves when we open to wisdom beneath the happening.

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Wake-Up Call Prompt #4.

Think about an area of your life where you’re holding yourself to an unforgiving standard. Maybe it’s perfection, maybe it’s just something close enough to lead to self-flagellation and shame. Write it down. What does this look like? Large or small.

Then, ask yourself what a different standard might look like. A more accepting and forgiving one. One that not only allows for your humanity and fallibility, but actually celebrates it. Write that down, too. And, see if, next time you catch yourself in judgy-perfection-seeking land, you can laugh for a second, let it go, and settle into a more grace-filled place.