WHY YOU ARE READY!

Great news!  You are finally ready!!!  I am so happy for you and know everything is going to work out wonderfully!  You are being very brave and I totally applaud that, while at the same time knowing you have all the tools you need to succeed.  Go for it, and I will be cheering you on every second of the way!

So here’s the thing:  if you read those words and kind of got that sick pit of excitement in your stomach and started thinking specifically about something you’ve wanted to do but have been putting off for whatever various reasons?  Then I am 100% correct!  YOU ARE READY.  If on the other hand you were like, “WTF is she talking about?”, then my apologies.  As you were.  But it’s time for all of us to stop procrastinating in general, don’t you think?  No time like the present and there will always be reasons “why not” for you to fall back on.  But what I want you to know right now is this:  if there is a situation, job, relationship you want to get out of but feel you can’t?  YOU CAN and you are fully capable of not only doing so, but thriving elsewhere.  If there is a dream, invention, or business that you want to pursue but feel incapable of bringing to fruition?  You are MORE THAN CAPABLE, just put one foot in front of the other and off you will go.  Stop thinking so much about what you wish you were doing and start doing it.  Is that a clear enough instruction for you?

So now maybe a small number of you are thinking—“You know what?  She’s right!  The time is now and I am going to go for it!”—while most of you are thinking, “Yeah, right, Ms. Nike.  I’ll just do it and screw over everybody involved, including myself with my lack of planning and forethought”.   HA!  Love the “Ms. Nike” bit, you guys are very funny.  And of course to a degree you are correct…there is planning and forethought that need to happen before you make any kind of major move in your life.  So start planning already.  My point is that the obstacles you perceive outside of yourself are NOTHING when compared to the obstacles you face inside of yourself.  The problem isn’t that you’re too old or too poor or too dumb or too unorganized or too whatever-the-hell-you-think-you-are to achieve your objective.  The problem is that you THINK any of these things and let that thought decide the course of your future.  The biggest obstacle is, as I have said before, that you are more adept at building a case against yourself than for yourself.

When I was growing up, my Dad had a number of excellent lines that he applied, sometimes indiscriminately, to life situations both great and small.  One of his absolute favorites, something he said to all of us over and over was “This is it!  This is what you’ve been trained for!”  It was his general rallying cry, and he may have been talking about getting ready for church, a big test, or just as likely going on a lark.  My Dad preached readiness, no matter what the situation.  There was never a moment, big or trivial, that he felt we weren’t “trained for”, fully capable of achieving.  In fact, he said it so often that it became a kind of background noise, a given.  And as far as subconscious programming went, I think he did a pretty good job, because if I could think of one word that describes all of my siblings, it would have to be capable.  Nobody is throwing hands up in despair during tough times.  We are all right there being…well, tough.  Difficult to dismount.  Determined.  All in all, not too shabby.  That’s another one of Dad’s gems, btw.

“The Little Engine That Could” is not an enduring tale because we all love to be annoyed.  And that engine is very annoying.  It endures because we need to be reminded to believe in ourselves, not give up so easily on what we want.  I will now take that premise a step further:  not only are you READY, you were BORN to DO whatever it is you are thinking about doing.    I’m paraphrasing Joan of Arc here, just so you know…people thought she was crazy, too.  Fortunately, whatever YOUR “crazy” dream, plan or idea, we no longer burn people at the stake, so what is stopping you?  If Joan was not afraid, why are you?  That’s not a hypothetical question, so here’s the answer:  Joan was not afraid because she had faith.  That’s all you need to take the first step.  Faith.  In YOURSELF.  If you have that, everything else is just icing.  Don’t believe me?  Ask anyone who has accomplished a big dream.  Yes, there will be setbacks, yes there will be disappointments but you are READY for this, perhaps most of all.  Like Dad always said, “This is what you’ve been trained for”…to endure setbacks and disappointments and keep going anyway.  You’ve done it a million times before, why not do it for something that really matters to you, really counts?

Great news!  You are finally ready!!!  I am so happy for you and know everything is going to work out wonderfully!  You are being very brave and I totally applaud that, while at the same time knowing you have all the tools you need to succeed.  Go for it, and I will be cheering you on every second of the way!   I hope you can hear these words and know they are the truth.  You were born to do this, and I am really so very excited for you.  You are ready to be happy.

WHY YOU HAVEN'T RUINED ANYTHING

So the other day a friend of mine joked that he was going to call his autobiography, “The Lives I’ve Ruined”.  HA!  At least, I hope that was a joke.  But as a recovering perfectionist, it got me thinking a lot about that idea that things get “ruined” because of our actions…a cake, an event, a relationship…we say we “ruined” it by adding too much sugar or scheduling it on a day it rained or enabling bad behavior or behaving badly ourselves. 

I think the reality is that most things are pretty tough to ruin.  I guarantee you will find someone who thinks your ruined cake is delicious (or at the very least hilarious), your rainy wedding poetic and your “failed” relationship good riddance to bad trash.  Most good things are very hard to ruin, and to ruin a life is damned near impossible.  There goes the premise of my friend’s autobiography.  See, I ruined it for him.  Ha again.

I used to be the kind of person who never left the house without make-up.  Never let anyone see my house messy.  Never let anyone know they had hurt me, exposed my fear of not being lovable, not being good enough.  Perfectionism was recently redefined by Elizabeth “Eat, Pray, Love” Gilbert as “Fear, in really good shoes”.   I used to be afraid that if I was unkempt or messy or vulnerable, these obvious markers of my imperfection would declare me unlovable, worthless. 

I lived in a constant state of anxiety about “ruining” things and this anxiety caused me not only to screw up more, but also rendered me incapable of enjoying anything until it was completed and deemed by the royal me as a “success”.  Naturally I set the bar so high for what was “successful” or “clean” or “attractive”, I could rarely accomplish my objective, which would leave me with massive case of “aftershame”.    Eventually I realized it was my expectation that things go “perfectly” that was the real enemy.  Not the rain, the zit or the dust on my mantle.  It was the idea that anything less than perfect was “ruined”.

For example, as an achievement driven society, we tend to view marriage as a “goal” in a relationship; a long term marriage is a “success”, a marriage that ends in divorce is a “failure”.  Divorce means we “ruined” our marriage.  But not all relationships are meant to last forever. 

This message brought to you by a Cancer, stage three clinger if there ever was one.  Just ask any of the people who have been engaged in 20, 30 and in a few cases 40+ years of friendship with me:  I hang on for dear life.  Like the crab that is the symbol of my sun sign, once I attach I am very, very difficult to shake off.  

I am passionate in my friendships; in fact, I am passionate about all things I love, from people to places to movies to books and in a few rare cases even things.  But I have had to accept, fortunately again in a few rare cases, that some relationships are not built to last.  There is almost always some pain in this, but endings are actually new paths that open for us, paths that the relationship prepared us for and pushed us towards.  This is the gift of a “failed” relationship:  it sends you in a new direction that you never would have conceived of if you hadn’t come through it exactly the way you did.  It was a gateway to a new part of your life, a new part of you.

There is humor and wisdom in the expression, “There’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk”, because it reminds us to laugh at the hypocrisy of judgments.  Have you ever known a slob who becomes a self-righteous neatnik after living with a worse slob?  We see ourselves mirrored in our exchanges with other people and when we don’t like the reflection, it is our invitation to grow and change. ..“When the student is ready, a teacher appears”.   I think this applies to every single relationship you have in your life. 

But here’s the rub:  in each of those relationships you are BOTH teacher AND student.  We learn from each other, sometimes through joyful communion and sometimes…not so joyful.  The Buddhists believe it is the people who irritate us and push our buttons that we have the most to learn from.  There is an old legend about a man who was relocating to a new village and insisted on taking his worst and most insubordinate servant along.  When the head houseman questioned this decision his master told him he had heard the inhabitants of the new village were so pleasant he was afraid he would not have any opportunity for personal growth without him.  Love it!

So here is my conclusion:  you haven’t ruined anything.  If you are still breathing, you still have an opportunity to bring your best self to the table and live a life you feel good about.  That will mean a million different things to a million different people and that is how it is supposed to be.  We travel many roads with our various companions while we are here on earth, some of them more enjoyable than others, all of them crucial to the development of our true selves.  

 Like an irritant forms a pearl, we are honed into our best selves by the people who challenge us as much as those who love us.  We learn from each other and while we definitely will have preferences about the lessons we get, all of them are ultimately useful if we remember to see them that way.  Not a single thing you have done in your life has been in vain, because you (and/or someone else!) have learned from it.  You haven’t ruined anything.  You are on a journey and even if you sometimes feel lost, the destination is never in doubt.
  

WHY YOU GOTTA READ THE SIGNS

One of my favorite scenes in any movie ever is in the otherwise unexceptional film, “The Man with Two Brains”.  Steve Martin (LOVE!) plays a widower who becomes smitten with a femme fatale played by none other than her royal hotness, Kathleen Turner.  Out of respect for his deceased spouse, before proposing to his new lady Martin asks for permission to move on, beseeching his wife’s portrait to give him a sign about how she feels regarding his re-marriage. 

The portrait begins to spin and smoke, the house begins to shake and a disembodied voice begins wailing, “NOOO!!!  NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”   When this commotions ends, Martin is left standing with his hair on end, face blackened with smoke, home in disarray.  And he says once more to the portrait, “Just any kind of sign…”

HA!  Funniest scene EVER.  And, less comically, the way many of us live our lives.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have watched people I care about drive their cars over the proverbial cliff because they failed to see the sign that said, “DANGER:  CLIFF AHEAD!” 

Even though that sign was posted on the dashboard.  In blinking, hot pink neon. 

Sound familiar???

As every parent knows, there is no greater enticement to most kids than the voice of experience and reason saying “That is a bad idea.”  We are ALL OF US driven on some level toward destructive behaviors, for both conscious and unconscious reasons.  This is why the ability to read the signs comes in so very handy.

I have heard it said that people announce to you who they are and what you can expect from them from your very first meeting.  Which is why it is hilarious that I failed to read the “sign” that a former boyfriend of mine wore on our first date.  Literally wore, on his chest.  Like Superman in reverse, the emblem he blazed on his sweatshirt was this:  YOU COULD DO WORSE. 

What followed was an extended period of on-again, off-again crazy-making nonsense, driven by his very low self-esteem and my very high need to “fix” things.  I could have done worse; he was not an addict, he didn’t hit me and he was a great cook.  But I could have done a lot better, if only I had read the sign that he so helpfully provided for me.

You may think this is an extreme example but I assure you, it is not.  I am not going to tell any tales out of school, but I could give you evidence in abundance of people I know who not only failed to recognize a sign this obvious, but in fact failed to acknowledge multiple signs more obvious, even when they were literally being beaten over the head with them. 

But signs can be positive, too.  We miss these less often; still they can be easily overlooked. 

Have you ever had a person who keeps showing up in your life?  You run into them at the grocery store, the library, the park?  What do you do with this?  Do you dismiss it as a funny coincidence or do you see it as a sign that maybe this person might be a good choice to deliberately spend time with?  Or have you ever been wondering about some decision you have to make, only to turn on the radio and hear a song that speaks directly to your dilemma?  It’s a sign, if you will hear it.

Ultimately, the hardest thing about the signs is watching others ignore the obvious to their own detriment.  One litmus test I have used in conversations with people I love about choices they are making that are causing them pain:  if you were a character in a book or a movie (like “The Man with Two Brains”!), what would you think of your behavior?  Is your character a good guy or a bad guy?  Is your character wise or foolish? 

When you look at the "story” of your life objectively, can you identify the behaviors and choices that are wreaking havoc, or are you convinced that you have no choice but to “stay the course”, even though you are unhappy with it?  While it is important to maintain compassion for your “character”, it is also crucial to your well-being to assess the situation honestly in order to follow the signs you may have been deliberately avoiding. 

If you were hiking in an unknown forest, would you ignore the signs that help keep you from getting lost?  If not, why do you ignore them in real life, an unknown forest if there ever was one!

The signs are everywhere.  In fact, signs are big business!  Go into any gift shop in this country and you will see signs galore, signs designed to announce something about who you are:  a cat or dog lover, a fisher, a golfer, a banjo player or a drinker of wine…you can purchase a sign that says just about anything you want. 

People buy these signs and hang them in their homes to let those who visit know something about them, not unlike my ex’s sweatshirt.  We like to announce who we are through tweeting, texting, blogging, posting and status updates—we extend to the world the courtesy of knowing what to expect from us and what not to expect from us.  Then other people can read our signs and act on the information we have provided...or ignore it.  Which one seem smarter to you, when put that way? 

The signs are everywhere!  You walk when the sign says walk, you stop when the sign says stop; this works for you, so why not expand on this behavior and see what happens?  I’ll bet you anything it is all good.

 

WHY I TRUST REJECTION

You should see the looks I get when I say this:  “I TRUST rejection”.  Whew, they run the gamut, from flabbergasted to skeptical to admiring to (dare I say it?) REJECTING.  Most people frankly can’t quite process it at first, probably because it sounds so self-defeating and un-American.  Americans don’t know the meaning of the word rejection!!!  Rejection is our cue to TRY HARDER, WORK MORE and CHASE FASTER!!!  And if all else fails, you cannot reject me because I REJECT YOU!!!!!  Ha, it sounds silly when I put it that way, doesn’t it?  Like life is a comic book instead of a precious commodity.  Rejection to most of us feels like a signal to ramp up the SMASH! POW!  BAM in our comic book lives, and REALLY SHOW THEM!  Really show them that we are NOT rejection material, especially if we can lose some weight, start working out or maybe somehow become more lovable.

Groucho Marx once famously said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”  This is a humorous illustration of the sad fact that many of us don’t believe who we are and what we have is good enough.  That is why we spend so much time (and money) acquiring things: a bigger house, a nicer car, clothes with fancy labels, Facebook “likes”.  We want approval and PROOF of our value, like somehow a human soul is a quantifiable commodity that can be measured by external standards.   Rejection is an unacceptable experience, a judgment to disprove, something to overcome.  But I lived in L.A. for years and in case you have never had the pleasure, let me tell you L.A.’s bread and butter IS rejection.  If you live in L.A., you are constantly receiving the message that you are NOT good enough; you are not talented enough, pretty enough, thin enough, cool enough.  Your boobs are too small, your nose is too big, your script is too indie, your song is too country, your audition too out there.  Whatever it is, you just know you are fundamentally NOT RIGHT.  Until the day you decide that you are.

Because life is not a movie, there was no big moment when this happened for me; no parting of the clouds, no mystical wise person to guide me, no life changing relationship, job, or accomplishment that taught me to love myself as is.  It happened over time in a million moments; I had to learn some lessons a hundred times before they stuck, while a few came like a lightning bolt.  But even the lightning bolt realizations had to be reinforced.  I gradually came to understand that not only do things “happen for a reason”, but also DON’T “happen for a reason” and this reason is the best reason going:   it is not right for you.  Most of us have been dumped by a person we thought we loved…we learn that when love is not a two way street it may still be love but it is NOT a relationship.  Most of us have lost out on jobs we thought we wanted, houses we tried to buy, maybe even clubs we yearned to join.  In many cases, time teaches us that there was a better job, house or club for us.  So why not skip waiting to know that, and just assume it immediately?

When you lose a job that is supporting you and possibly others, it is hard to wrap your head around the idea that it is for the best and there is something better out there for you.  But the fact that income is necessary to life makes it impossible to wallow for too long; you call headhunters, you look on Craig’s list, you hit the pavement, whatever.  And generally speaking you find that next job, whether sooner or later, and all’s well that ends well.  But relationships are trickier, aren’t they?  When we get dumped, left, REJECTED we tend to sink into it.   And people will support us in wallowing in a way they NEVER would if we did it over a lost job.  This is kindness.  But we hear a lot of the same things we would hear about the lost job:  “You are better off because you were not appreciated/valued and YOU DESERVE MORE.”  Yet we have been programmed to believe that it is in fact the club that REJECTS us that is more desirable.   That the rejection proves they are “too good” for us and therefore we need to fight to prove our worthiness.  

I say this is more comic book logic. Nothing should be less interesting to you than someone who is not interested in you.  Really. We have all read accounts of people who seem to have it all yet are clearly not happy, however this manifests.  Divorce, addiction, violence…people are attracted to stories of woe involving the rich and famous  because they tell them something they want to hear but can never quite believe:  fame, money, beauty and recognition are not magical elixirs.  These external markers cannot quiet the internal voices.  If you are not fundamentally happy with yourself, there is nothing you can add to your outside that will make you so, NOTHING.  But if you are okay with who you are, there is nothing that can happen to you that will convince you otherwise, NOTHING.  That is why I say, I accept rejection and can even be grateful for it.  You are saving me a lot of paddling upstream and banging my head against a wall.  If I don’t seem like a good thing to you, if you are not interested in me as I am, then that is okay.  I am glad to be myself, with or without you.  But I do LOVE a club that will have me as a member!  That’s when I know I am where I belong.
 

PLEASE like this on the Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kara-postkennedy/why-i-trust-rejection_b_8103488.html

 

WHY COMPLAIN WHEN YOU COULD CRITICIZE?

I love to complain.  It is a long held habit that I truly enjoy for so many excellent reasons.  For one, I am really, really good at it.  We all enjoy the feeling of mastery, and I have mastered the art of complaining, honed it to a razor sharp edge that cuts right through the bullshit to the heart of the matter:  a lot about our world sucks.  Does that seem harsh?  If you think so, you and I could probably never be friends.  Because as much as I value the ability to accentuate the positive, I value the ability to see what is really screwed up even more.

Of course we all know what I like to call “the wrong kind” of complainer, those people who pretty much exclusively complain about the same things over and over every day until they have drained you of every single bit of compassion you might have ever felt for them.   These people are energy vampires who herald their own powerlessness in the face of such atrocities as “the DMV” and “the speed limit” and “the weather”.   They don’t quite grasp the usefulness of online registration, obeying the law or umbrellas, so they come up against disasters on a regular basis, and this is not only exhausting to hear about, it’s also catastrophically boring.  And the worst part for me, these whiners give complaining a bad name!

If at this point you are wondering which kind of complainer YOU are, I will give you a helpful hint:  if you feel energized and invigorated by your complaining, you are my kind of complainer!  If you complain to people who actually may be able to help you rectify the situation you are complaining about, you are my kind of complainer!  And most importantly, if you also utilize the complaint’s oh-so-effective cousin, criticism, then you are my kind of complainer!  Rejoice, you are impacting both your world and your blood pressure in very positive ways!

As much fun as complaining is, criticism is just that much better, because not only are you pointing out a situation that leaves a lot to be desired, you are offering a potential solution.  For example, if your husband asks you where the mayonnaise is and you tell him (probably for the 400^th time) that it is in the refrigerator, there is a pretty good chance he will assure you that he has already looked, because it  is a fairly obvious location for this condiment.  So you will go to look for yourself, and inevitably you will find the mayo just where it always is (or on rare occasion, slightly obscured by the ketchup bottle) and now you are faced with some choices. 

Will you go ahead and make your husband’s sandwich, because you are up now anyhow?  Or will you complain that you “have to do everything around here” and then make his sandwich?  Or will you tell him that he is as lazy as he is blind and that opening the fridge is not the same as actually moving your eyes from side to side and scanning the contents, and then slam the jar on the counter and storm off?  It’s up to you obviously, but I choose number three.  Because as good as I am at complaining and criticizing, I might be even more skilled at storming off.

 The point I am making here is that what is complaining and criticizing but the savory marriage of identifying a problem and offering a solution?  What could be more productive and positive than that?  If I complain “I have to do everything around here”  I have identified a problem that certainly needs to be rectified. 

But then if I further offer the solution of moving one’s eyes from side to side when the refrigerator is open to scan its contents, I have now taught you a life skill that will serve you most excellently well.  And how can this be a bad thing?  Life has just potentially gotten a little better for us both, what with me not running wild goose chases and you with your mobile eyeballs (these come in handy for so much more than scanning for food, I promise you that).

Pretending there are no problems in the world seems to me the silliest and most counterproductive of options.  The world is full of problems, and this is why we actually have something to do with ourselves every day.  The more problems we identify and fix, the easier and happier life becomes.  And it all starts with a complaint.  The sound of that first whine starts the cosmic ball rolling, and who knows where a well-placed criticism can take it next.  So come on, do your part!  Make a complaint today!  And if someone complains to you and there is any way in your power to make that person’s complaint go away, just do it.  We’re all in this together, and if you oil a squeaky wheel today, you have just brought us all a little closer to heaven.

WHY YOU GOTTA HAVE FRIENDS

True ‘dat.  You could find a billion t-shirts, mugs, pillows, stitch samplers, picture frames and people who would agree with some version of this sentiment.  So it’s not like this is a groundbreaking insight of mine.  Friends are really, at the end of the day, who and what we live for.  Our families are different; they are so intrinsic to who we are that there is very little separation between us.  Friends on the other hand…these are the treasures of discovery, the uncharted continent, the freedom of CHOICE. 

“Friends are the family you choose” is another one of those stitch sampler wisdoms…but I think it goes beyond this.  Our friends represent the parts of us that didn’t quite jibe with our families, the pieces of us we may have denied if not for them; friends help us create the mosaic of our wholeness.  Our friends make us FREE, our friends make us WHOLE.  And that is why we need to consciously return the favor.

The late, great British author Iris Murdoch once quite brilliantly defined love as the quality of being “inexhaustible” to each other; that is, never feeling done, never feeling as though all of the gold has been mined out of this particular relationship.  When I use this as my yardstick, it quite accurately delineates bonds that exist out of history or loyalty and bonds that exist because of true love.  I believe true love and passion can be found in any format—not just for romance, it is equally applicable to friendship and yes, even family relations. 

“Passion” and “lust” get used interchangeably sometimes and this is a shame.  Because passion is the driver of life, the voice of God urging our souls forward.  The love we feel for our children literally makes us want to shout from the rooftops, dance in the streets, throw ourselves in front of a bus if necessary for their survival…is this not passion?  The love we feel for our friends and family gets us to do all kinds of inconvenient and nonsensical things if we think it will help them or make them happy in some small way.  This is the inexhaustible well of love.  

One of the biggest mistakes any of us make in love and friendship is to try to box it up, keep it on a leash, limit ourselves or the other person in some way.  Sometimes our insecurity makes us believe that “true love” is about bending to another’s will, or worse yet, making them bend to ours.  If people don’t “behave” in the way we have determined is acceptable to us, it is certainly worth a discussion. 

But ultimately we have a decision to make—do I choose to have this person in my life for who they really are, or am I hoping they will become who I think I need them to be?  If the answer to this question is the latter, then it might be time to move on for both of you.  A relationship isn’t a “test”.  It exists for the mutual benefit of the parties involved, and there will be challenges and there will be arguments, but these should always lead to expansion, not restriction.  The more restrictions you place on your relationship, the more likely you are to stifle it to death.

Years ago, a friend said this regarding relationships:  “You don’t go to the hardware store for milk”.  This has become my relationship credo, as it were.  These are the words I need on my t-shirt and stitched onto a sampler for me.  You don’t go to the hardware store for milk because you know better.  Likewise, you should not go to your “good time/shopping” friend if you need a shoulder to cry on.  Any more than you would ask a happily married friend for divorce advice or a shopaholic friend for budgeting tips.  We all bring different gifts to the table and these gifts are all welcomed and should be graciously accepted. 

But as far as I can tell from anecdotal evidence, one of the biggest causes of relationship “crisis” is when one person wants the other person to be something/someone they are not.  When they go to the hardware store and become outraged that it doesn't carry milk.  To be upset that a person we know to be selfish is behaving selfishly or a person we know to be moody is being moody…well, it’s kind of like being upset that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  A pointless waste of energy.

Look, we are all forced into contact with people we would rather not engage with, if given our druthers.  Friends SHOULD NOT BE THOSE PEOPLE.  I hate to beat a dead horse, but Facebook has devalued the word friend to such an extent that it gets thrown around as casually as a penny is thrown into a fountain…it has lost its worth.  It is important to remember that a friend is a free choice you made, not some horrid obligation thrust upon you.  As your choice, you need to take full responsibility for it.  If how the other person is or WHO the other person is bothers you?  Make another choice.  Don’t go through the motions while secretly resenting the hardware store that doesn’t carry milk. 

Life is too short to choose bullshit, you dig?  If you have ever felt like you were invisible to another person or conversely come across someone who is an unpleasantly unsolvable riddle to you…trust this.  And back away.  There are plenty of friends for you to choose from, as long as you are okay with the fact that one is handy with a wrench while another bakes a mean cake.  As you allow others to be themselves, an amazing thing happens:  they return the favor.  That is friendship.  Don’t go to the hardware store without it.

PLEASE "like" this for me on the Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kara-postkennedy/why-you-have-to-have-friends_b_7784592.html

WHY POBODY'S NERFECT

You are perfect. 

Scared you there, didn’t I???  Who do you know, who isn’t a complete and total narcissist, who can accept a compliment well?  Honestly, most people glow, just light up when you say something nice to them, BUT most people also disagree with you either verbally or nonverbally in some way.  The rolling eyes, the little shake of the head, the “Who me?” rejoinder.  And that’s just if you say something like, “Nice haircut”. 

Now hear this:  YOU ARE PERFECT.  Most people will full-on recoil, eyes rolling in the back of the head exorcist-style and very likely you will hear the ever popular voice of Ziggy say, “Pobody’s Nerfect.”  Am I right, or am I right?  BTW, if you don’t know who Ziggy is…well, that is just sad.  I’m sorry.

As a teenager, I was obsessed with the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (nerd alert!) and most specifically, “The Birth-Mark”.    Also:  Ziggy.  But first to discuss the Hawthorne…this totally awesome story is about a brilliant scientist who marries a radically hot woman described as physically “perfect” with one exception: a small red birthmark on her face in the shape of a hand. 

Apparently blinded by science, the husband has no problem with this birthmark until the day they walk down the aisle; then he becomes obsessed with it.  With its hideousness, of course!  He dreams of cutting off her cheek, he is literally repulsed by his scorching-babe-of-a-wife because of this one small perceived imperfection.  So the wife says—“Get rid of it!”  (I am paraphrasing here)—because her husband’s love and esteem mean everything to her, this small blemish nothing.  So he does!  And also…then she dies.  Wah.

So what are we to learn from this tale?  Perfection kills?  Men are shallow?  OR how about this:  it is our imperfections that make us perfect.  Huh?  Huh???  I say it again…it is those small quirks and oddities that distinguish us from every other person on the planet.  These are the things that make us US, the things that perfect our characters, redeem our souls. 

Every now and then you will hear about someone who gets hysterical regarding Barbie (not me) or Photoshop (that’s me) or some other arbiter of the unrealistic ideal that no one can ever achieve.  The bottom line of these arguments tends to be that pobody’s nerfect and these images (and dolls) confuse us and make us unhappy with WHO WE REALLY ARE.  But the real problem lies in the idea that who we are and how we are is somehow not right, never mind not good enough.  That we are intrinsically flawed.

Like the concept of original sin (sorry people who believe in this!)…there is an idea that the human creature is an imperfect vessel waiting to be perfected.  Whether through prayer, ritual or plastic surgery, our flaws need to be excised to make us pleasing in God’s (and Madison Avenue’s) eyes.  My response is this:  BULLSHIT. 

If God is All-Powerful, then why create flawed creatures who need to jump through hoops to please Him?  Why not use those super-powers to create already perfect beings?  Is this a game show?  Some kind of cosmic “Hunger Games” where we outlast, outwit and outplay each other for God’s favor?  Or are we beloved sons (and daughters) in whom God is well pleased?  Are “the very hairs on our heads numbered”?  You pick what works for you, but I choose the latter.  Every hair on your head is precious and correct in the eyes of everyone who understands why we are really here.  Especially the greys!

You are perfect.  Every scar, every scab, every heartbreak, every mistake…these are the things that make you who you are.  These are the things that have taught you invaluable lessons and given you invaluable wisdom.  Cellulite free legs may have “taught” you to wear a bathing suit without shame, but this is not exactly a world-changing stance.  A high metabolism may have “taught” you that Dunkin’ Donuts ROCKS!!!!  But that is not exactly a life affirming position.  Naturally bouncin’ and behavin’ hair may have “taught” you that every day is a good hair day, but has it taught you compassion, generosity or coping skills? 

Because the world is not perfect, but you are.  The world cannot comfort a grieving friend, soothe an inconsolable child or repair a broken relationship, but you can.  Your super-powers are born not from the ways you are perfect, but rather from the ways you have experienced your mistakes and “imperfections”.  You are not Barbie, you are not Gandhi, you are YOU; thank God for that!

Like the smokin’ hot wife in “The Birth-mark”, when you remove the (perceived) imperfections, you remove who you are.  You literally cease to exist.  You become Barbie, plastic and empty and INTERCHANGEABLE.  Human beings are like snowflakes, no two exactly alike. 

And do you not think this is by design?  By perfect design?  You fill a space that no one else can fill because your bumps and “flaws” and differences make your space unique and invaluable.  The next time you make a mistake, instead of thinking “What is wrong with me?”, realize that now something new is right with you—you have learned, you have grown, you have gained a coping position that you previously did not have.  Because the world is not perfect, but you are. 

And finally for Ziggy:  he isn’t actually the one who coined “Pobody’s nerfect.”  Ziggy was more of a “So what if everyone laughs at you?  You are making the world a happier place!” kind of guy.  You and your perfect imperfections are making the world a happier place for sure.