Perfectly Imperfect and Redefining Success
Lewis Capaldi's comeback, emotional resilience, and the necklace I wear every day
I love a festival; however, I’ve never been to Glastonbury. There are too many people and too little sleep for my liking, so I love catching up from the comfort of my sofa.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to camp, in fact my daughter and I are off to ALSO festival next weekend - with a new tent, because it turns out the squirrel who kindly stored peanuts in our Christmas decorations and burrowed into our Christmas cushions, also took a liking to our trailer, where it burrowed deep into our very expensive eight-man inflatable tent. More peanuts. More destruction. So, a replacement was needed and we’re excited for next weekend, even though it’s going to be super hot again!
But, Glastonbury and the miles and miles of it? Not a chance!
Of course, the joys of watching the best bits on TV are that you get nice and close to the action, and Lewis Capaldi’s comeback was something else.
He’s such a special artist, totally unafraid of being his raw self in front of thousands of people. That’s vulnerability right there. He doesn’t use it as an excuse not to show up or do what he’s doing; he delivers, in his own incredibly powerful, unique way.
He performed a new song called Survive, and it sent chills through me, tears stinging my eyes at the raw emotion he brought to the stage. It was so inspirational. It was the kind of performance that shows us if he can get up there, pushing through his emotions and nerves, which were clearly trying to take over, so can we. We can be brave. We can do better. We can do this!
You can hear the emotion in his voice, quiveringly determined to do the thing that he loves. And they say there are no male role models? Like a marathon runner painfully limping their way through the final miles, he pushed through. Epic performance!
But what made it most special for me was when he said that this had been his goal, as it’s been two years since he stepped back from the public eye because of anxiety and Tourette’s. Far from perfect, it was perfect - if that makes sense. He wrote this song as a promise to himself and the words can work as a mantra for us all:
How long til it feels like the wound’s finally starting to heal? How long til it feels like I’m more than a spoke in a wheel? Most nights, I feel that I’m not enough. I’ve had my share of Monday mornings when I can’t get up. So when hope is lost and I come undone, I swear to God, I’ll survive if it kills me to. I’m gonna get up and try, if it’s the last thing I do. I’ve still got something to give, though it hurts sometimes. I’m gonna get up and live until the day that I die.
And that’s exactly what he did!
We All Have Something to Give
There’s a line in the song that particularly stuck out to me:
I still have so much to give.
The timing is funny too, because Substack did one of those memory things earlier this week. You know when Facebook reminds you of a memory from a certain number of years back and asks you if you want to repost it? Well Substack did that for me with a post I’d written called ‘Do you ever feel like your life is slipping through the cracks?’ exactly a year ago.
And quoting Capaldi’s lyrics again, we all want to feel like we’re more than a spoke in a wheel. We all want to matter, and the reality is, we do, even when we don’t feel it.
The truth is that no matter how worn down or sidelined we feel, we all carry something within us that the world needs. But we forget it, especially when life doesn’t move at the pace we hoped, especially in a world that glorifies overnight success, and everything happening now.
But if there’s one thing I’m learning more and more, the most meaningful things in life don’t arrive instantly. They take time. They take effort. They take patience. They take resilience. They take bravery. They take a willingness to fall down and get back up, time and time again. And they take grit to keep going when it would be so much easier to stop.
And that’s what success really is.
Not the applause, but the showing up time and again, until you get there.
Why I Wear "Hope"
The other day, my husband asked me why my HOPE necklace is my favourite. I wear it every day. I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite, though. It’s not even a fashion choice. It’s more like a tattoo; a prophetic act of optimism. I wear it as a mantra because I believe in hope. It gives us strength when we aren’t feeling strong, and sense of belief when things are hard.
No matter what comes, we can choose to believe in the possibility of better days ahead, not by luck but by our choosing to press on with the things that we love, and that matter to us. Hope reminds us that we’re not done yet.
Redefining Success
I don’t know if you watched Capaldi’s performance at the time, lucky you if you were there, but I was so thrilled for him when he said that performance had been the goal that kept him going. He’d done it!!
We all need goals that help us press on. They give us a sense of purpose and help us mark different seasons of life.
For the last twenty-plus years, I’ve been driven by one solid goal: to give my children a secure home and put them through university if they wanted to go. They’ve both just finished their second years, and they are flourishing. They are balanced, grounded, and bloody brilliant human beings. In my mind, that’s success.
So, I’m moving into a new season now, and I’m setting new goals. Success isn’t the big house, the big following on social media or the big bank balance or flashy holidays. It’s knowing what matters to you personally, and then making it happen - no matter how long it takes.
The most successful and fulfilled people I know, are the ones who’ve pushed on toward their own goal, doing the thing that’s important to them, despite the hurdles and failures. Being resilient is holding onto the hope that they can do the thing.
But pressing on is a choice we have to make every single day. Just like the lyrics in the second verse say:
I refuse to spend my best years rotting in the sun
Putting hope into action means getting up when your body wants to stay in bed or sit on the sofa. It’s when you try again even though your imposter-syndrome says you were crazy for thinking you could succeed in the first place. Hope is there when you want to throw the towel in, but everything in you knows that this is what you want, so instead, you try again, and again.
Lewis Capaldi’s Survive is a reminder that hope is not naïve. It’s necessary. Showing up with quiet determination, our imperfect selves, on a daily basis is sticking our fingers up to the world that wants everything instantly, polished and shining bright. Real life doesn’t work that way. Real life is hard, but when we keep going, it pays off.
So if that’s you - keep going. You are not alone!
Love reading your emails very inspiring. Thank you pipa
You will love ALSO! We went last year, would have gone this weekend but one of my best friends is getting married. Love the life goals - just a couple of years behind you with Uni looming but like you, will feel incredibly proud of the decades spent nurturing two incredibly resilient, strong and wise young women. Also very much looking forward to the next phase! Much love to you xx