Monday, August 4, 2014

Good enough

Sometimes I think about our society obsession with "good enough". How no one ever measures up to good enough. I'm not good enough for ____ fill in the blank. We all walk around assuming we should be perfect and everyone around us should be perfect. So when a friend or relative does something we don't like, it devastatingly disappoint us. They probably didn't mean to offend us, but yet we assume they did because shouldn't they be perfect. But no, you see we are all flawed, none of us are perfect and all of us will screw up. Life goes on, we pick ourselves us, fix the mess and move on. Yet sometimes we don't fix the mess or they don't fix the mess, and we wonder why were they weren't a good enough friend, or brother or parent to fix the mess. Who knows maybe they were purposefully mean. That happens too because they are human and humans are inextricably flawed. Sometimes people who love us, do hurt us. Why? there are million reasons, because they were hurt, maybe they weren't.  The real question is why do we set such a high standard for someone we love. We know that no one is perfect so we do we set up those we love for failure?
When we expect so much out of those we love, we set ourselves up for failure. If we set up standards that high for others, we've probably set up standards for ourselves even higher.  Guess what? I will never be good enough to be perfect. I will never be a perfect mother, or a perfect daughter, or a perfect wife, or a perfect friend. Because that would mean I would have to be 100% mother, 100% daughter, 100% wife, 100% friend, and I don't have 700% to give (100%x4 kids). Lets be honest, on most days I'm sure I'm not even producing 100%. I'm probably running on 70%, on good days 89% total.  Lately maybe only 50%. That's alright. Actually when I take my religious convictions into view, I'm not sure I'm ever even getting up to 89%. I will never get to 100% without the atonement of Jesus Christ making up the difference.
But back to the 700%, sure we think we should be good enough to be perfect in all aspects of our lives, but that is a load of crap. We were never meant to be 100% in everything, that is part of life, figuring out how juggle. Figuring out how to serve others, figuring out how to take care of ourselves, fulfill our duties, and everything all together. Which means 10% goes here, 6% there, 29% right there, 15% back there, don't forget the 12% over there.

Since I'm in the trenches of motherhood, I hear it all the time. Oh you sound like you have easy pregnancies, you should have lots of babies. Not me, I'm ornery so I shouldn't. She? is having another baby? she barely handles the ones she has. Oh look at so-and-so she is such a nice mom, she should have more. Oh you are so thin, why don't you have more babies. If the Lord was waiting for perfect parents then no babies would ever be born. We are all flawed we all fail from time to time, but guess what that is life. Some days we will be a crappy spouse, other days we might yell at the kids, other days we don't give our employer a very good day of labor. Other days a friend forget important event. Such is life, we move on and keep going. I often think of the old Toyota motto that was in Meet the Robinsons, "Keep Moving Forward". I also often think of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast, If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" My interpretation of that with what I've been talking about is, Life moves pretty fast. If you dwell on being good enough you could miss it. Life moves pretty fast if you stay obsessed with so-and-so hurting your feeling you will miss it.
But here is the real thing, I will never be a perfect mom, because what children view as a perfect mom would be a horrible mom. I can be a perfect wife, but mostly because I married a good man who ignores probably 70% of what I do and he focuses on the 15% I try to give him. I will never be perfect in general, because I need to take care of my own needs, but one of the best ways to take care of yourself is by serving others. Now all this just sounds confusing. So I'm signing off. Good night and good luck.

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