If you are looking for perfection, go to Mars
Congratulations! You’re not perfect! It’s ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway. But then, everybody’s ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people. You know what perfect is? Perfect is not eating or drinking or talking or moving a muscle or making even the teensiest mistake.
Perfect is never doing anything wrong — which means never doing anything at all. Perfect is boring! So you’re not perfect! Wonderful! Have fun! Eat things that give you bad breath! Trip over your own shoelaces! Laugh! Let somebody else laugh at you! Perfect people never do any of those things.
All they do is sit around and sip weak tea and think about how perfect they are. But they’re really not 100 per cent perfect anyway.
You should see them when they get the hiccups! Phooey! Who needs ‘em? You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person. Good people are hard to find nowadays. And they’re a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.
I got the paragraph above from Stephen Manes’ “Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!” and he is right on the money.
Funny thing though is that even if we are aware that we are not perfect, we expect other people to be. We put them on a pedestal and the moment they fall or even as much as stumble, we are right there to judge or throw them out because they didn’t measure up.
Like Stephen Manes wrote, being perfect is never doing anything at all, it’s being nothing. So allow people to be imperfect, allow them to be unguarded and free, not rigid and always trying to be the perfect spouse or girlfriend or whatever it is they are to you.
You get to know the most about someone during their unguarded moments, that’s when you see their true colours. And isn’t that what true love and friendship is about?
Being able to see one’s true colours and still choosing to stick with them? So get your panties (boxers) out of a twist, loosen up, live and let live. Take comfort in the knowledge that none of us is perfect.
However, this is not an invitation to put up with stupidity and all manner of folly. You choose the imperfections you can put up with.
There are those that you feel are out of your league.
For instance the man who thinks bathing at least once or twice a day is a waste of water or the one who thinks it’s manly to have kavubuka (smell like a he-goat), then the one who lets out loud farts in public and laughs about it or just carries on like nothing happened, now those are out of my league and I would quickly excuse myself.
And if I were a man, the girl who is always kind enough to bring her four friends to a date that was meant for two and then expect you to pay for their meals. Never mind that they are ordering food as if their stomachs were wholesale shops or warehouses on clearance sale. Now, that there is folly not imperfection.
When I was younger, I dreamt of the perfect guy, now all I want is a good guy who is as imperfect as I am.
Who knows that I don’t pee champagne, that there are times when I freak out and say things I shouldn’t and that sometimes, I wear torn underwear. I am not perfect, but who is?
