Imperfect

Have you ever watched someone butcher a job so badly that you would pull all your hair out to get them to stop? For example, when someone is coloring something with colored pencil but are coloring in all different directions. Or when someone is trying to squeeze a large object through a narrow hallway and they keep knocking down picture frames and vases. I hope it's a feeling that resonates; an overwhelming sense of "oh my gosh, please stop what you're doing right now; you're just making things worse!"  But I've been wondering lately if this situation might be an analogy for life. I'm pushing this "life-cart" blindly down this narrow "life-hallway" and I can't see ahead of me; I can't see where I'm going. And in my periphery, I can hear the sounds of all the things I'm breaking along the way: I'm bruising people's feelings; I'm breaking people's trusts; I'm severing relationships and destroying things I will never be able to replace. I'm walking through a neat hallway and in my wake, I am leaving behind a chaotic mess. And so the question is, how do I overcome the fear that I'm just making things worse than before, that maybe I should just stop pushing the "life-cart"? How do you live with yourself knowing that you are imperfect? How do you live with the paradox that all you want to do is to help people, but you realize in the process, you will probably hurt more people than you help? I don't know how and it drives me crazy. In the meantime, my thoughts play ping-pong with themselves: maybe sometimes the most beautiful things are also the messiest? Maybe sometimes you have to mess things up in order to fix them? Or maybe both of those are just selfish excuses for hurting other people. But maybe sometimes you have to be selfish in order to save yourself. Maybe only by saving yourself can you save someone else...