Perfection - who needs it?

I am not Martha Stewart - a Pagan Martha Stewart or otherwise. (Oh to kill the first person who made out a kitchen witch should be like some kind of Pagan version of Martha) I never have been and I never will be, more to the point, I wouldn't want to be. And I've never made any secret of that fact. So, why am I currently having so much angst over feeling like a failure because I'm not Martha Stewart? Because I'm not perfect? Because for every step I try to take forward, life and my darling demonic assistant seem to be immediately making me take a step backwards again? As fast as I clean, tidy or sort one thing, he is destructing, messing and upending somewhere else. Usually in the place I was in one minute earlier. Was it really like this last time? And if so, howinhell did I manage with TWO toddlers at once? Or am I just getting old?

More to the point, since the logical part of me knows that it's perfectly normal, why am I being so hard on myself over it? Once again I'm reminded of the question, why do we all strive to be perfect?

Far too often we become so tied up in being who other people want and expect us to be, however unrealistic those expectations might be, that we forget that we are, from the moment we are born, us. Individual, unique, living, thinking, feeling, breathing individuals, who are not necessarily perfect, but who are us.

Too often society expects us to be perfect, and when we fail to meet it's usually impossibly high standards, we become disillusioned and disheartened and then we feel guilty, we feel as if we have failed. We feel ashamed of our perceived failings and we begin to dislike ourselves.
Which begs the question, who needs perfection anyway?
Do we really need to be perfect or do we simply need to be good enough? Good enough to take care of ourselves and those we care about and make us, and them, happy.

Perfection, as defined by society and the media, is very much over-rated and unnecessary. Much as they would like us to believe that perfection is an essential ingredient to happiness, it isn't. Nobody can be perfect, be the best at everything, never fail, never get anything wrong. Forget the media images of the perfect wife or the perfect father or the perfect cook. That's all they are, images. Caricatures if you will that you could argue are there simply to make us feel inferior. Not that those who create those images would say that. They'd come up with some line as to why those images are good or real or something to strive for - but there's always a catch - just buy this, just do that this way, and then you'll be perfect, then you'll be happy. Bullshit.

A lot of people would be a lot happier if they stopped believing the hype and stopped trying to attain some mythical unreachable perfection and instead settled for 'good enough', for realistic goals and escaped the failed-perfection guilt and enjoyed what they have, what they can do and what they are. Certainly many people would be a lot happier if they didn't have a perpetual guilt cloud on their shoulder because society and the media make them feel inferior failures for not being perfect.

So I'm no Martha Stewart and I never will be. I try, that's all I can do, sometimes it goes right, and sometimes it doesn't - just ask the roll of distressed toilet paper adorning the rocking horse yesterday. I can live with not being perfect, what I don't need is that stupid damn guilt cloud on my shoulder. so I'm sending it on it's way. Maybe Martha would like it as a Christmas present with my compliments. Me, I'm going to drink my peach tea and remind myself "Who needs perfection anyway?" Not me.