The Perfect Beach
The Perfect Beach
Today, I felt that I found the most perfect beach I had ever seen: Bettyhill in Scotland, on the North Coast 500 Trail, where I have been spending some time.
I wondered, what makes a landscape or a setting feel so perfect?
I suppose today it was the perfect temperature. Beautiful sun, but not too hot, just enough to touch and warm my skin. The sand was so soft that it made for the most gentle entry into the water, with nothing to hurt the feet, only softness under the soles and heels. The waves were not too big and not too small. The water was mesmerising, and in one light it held all the colours of the rainbow. In another light it was black, and in another it was as clear as glass. All around, the inviting hills nestled and held the wildness of this bay, rising gently around it in soft cragginess.
Is perfection something we're always searching for?
I know this beach was perfect in this moment. The weather changes and I change. But in that moment, there was nothing to do and nothing to change: the wide horizon, my curious mind, the rolling waves, the craggy rocks, the sand, just as they were.
I wonder what this same beach would be on a grey, cold day, with the waves too big and the wind too sharp. If perfection depends on everything going my way, it is easily lost. What I noticed was something else:
No part of me felt it deserved this beach, or was entitled to any particular weather or landscape, or needed the sun to be warmer or the waves to be softer. I was simply fully receiving into my heart what was given: the warmth, the sand, the light on the water. Maybe that is what made it perfect.
Our parts are so often working to get our needs met, and that makes sense. We do have needs that must be met to survive. But there is a fine line between needing something and feeling entitled to it, feeling that we deserve it or have a right to it. A need asks. Entitlement demands.
What happens when parts let go of entitlement?
We could imagine Self energy is like a mountain or like the trees and plants: it just is. It might be hard to imagine trees and mountains feeling entitled to anything.
It's a big ask of our parts to let go of that feeling of entitlement to perfection, because they are trying so hard to keep us safe and cared for. Often parts are angry, seeking justice for needs that weren't met in the past. Entitlement doesn't loosen because we tell a part to stop wanting. It loosens when the part feels heard and no longer has to fight alone.
And in my experience, when it does loosen, suffering eases enormously. The world begins to look more perfect because we are finding it, not fighting it. We discover we are more resourced than parts were saying we were, the universe more abundant, full of gifts we receive every day in the trees and the landscape around us.
Perhaps this is what we are searching for on the inside: an inner landscape that is perfect, not because it has been earned or demanded, but because we stop insisting it be any other way than how it is. Perfection can be found. It can't be claimed.
A gentle invitation:
Notice where a part of you feels it deserves or is entitled to something today.
Listen to its story. Spend some time with this part and hear what it needs you to know.
Wonder with it, if it's open to that: how would it feel to let go of the entitlement and receive what comes as a gift instead?