Thursday, April 21, 2011

All or Nothing

As mentioned, I am a recovering all-or-nothingaholic. It seemed to me that if I could't do anything perfectly, it wasn't worth doing at all. Either I would exercise every day or not at all. Sometimes I would be on a good streak, but then I would miss a day for whatever reason, and it would all be over.

Slowly I began to realize that something is better than nothing. It came along with getting rid of black and white thinking. Although it still plagues me now, I'm happy I have gotten better at it. Having a child only compounds feelings of inadequacy and you don't really have a choice to be a perfect mom or not a mom at all once you have a baby.

As a mom, one thing I can think of that has forced me to reconcile with this way of thinking was our decision to use reusable diapers. My first instinct was that we would ONLY ever use the reusable diapers, even when we were outside the house. My husband (whose idea it was to use reusables) said that he had no problems using disposables from time to time, and I realized I was being haunted by old ways of thinking and thought that the occasional disposable wouldn't hurt. Then my daughter was born and she wasn't quite big enough for them and for the first three weeks we used disposables. I was tired enough and it was so easy, but I despaired for all the money we had spent and gave the cloth diapers a go. And then my daughter got a very bad diaper rash, and we went back to disposables. I wanted to quit the cloth diapers and even thought of how we could possibly gain some of the money we had spent back. But then the diaper rash went away, and we gave (messy) time without any diaper at all to keep it away and gave the cloth diapers another go. We still use disposables at night and when we're out, but I've accepted that I don't have to use cloth diapers 100% of the time to make it worthwhile. Even using just one reusable diaper saves one disposable from the landfill.

I am reminded of the story of the two men on the beach. The beach was littered with starfish and one of the men was picking up one at a time and throwing them back in the ocean. The other man looked at him like he was crazy and said, "What are you doing? There are thousands of starfish! You'll never make a difference." The other man picked up a starfish, threw it in the ocean and said, "Made a difference to that one." This has always been my motto for teaching, and I should remember to make it my motto for life. Because something is always better than nothing.


"Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides and following them you will reach your destiny." Unknown

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to remember that star fish story.

Good post :)