Perfectly Imperfect

Have you ever tried to do be perfect? I have. It lasted about a minute. Mainly because there is a lot of work that goes into perfection, let me tell you what. Trying to reach the perfect weight, have the perfect hair (something that is especially hard for me--have you the mess on top of my head? Yikes.), behave like a lady (also hard, I wore a gown for a night and by the end of it, I had met my match.)

So after the reality that my perfection quest set in , I started thinking about what if means to be perfect. And what is also means if we always striving—or more appropriately pretending— to be perfect, we may miss out on something that is truly lovely: Imperfection.

If you know me, you are also well aware of my many imperfections. For example, I have two bumps in my lower lip (clumsiness set in at an early age) scars scattered around my body from various mishaps, bug eyes (that's what my sister calls them--I secretly think she's just jealous--I like these giant blue jewels!) and of course, when I laugh really hard, my horse-laugh (as my dad lovingly calls it) makes an appearance.



And even though I am very aware of my imperfections, it’s interesting to me to see what other people think of as imperfect. For example, I have a gap in my front teeth. Cute, right? (You should say yes Tia that is cute, because it was passed on to me from my little mama and she is real cute.) Anyway, a couple of years ago I was getting some dental work done from this man-pretty dentist I used to go to. While he was doing his business, he told me he could “take care of” the gap in my teeth and "close that baby right up." A comment to which I sweetly responded, “Uh, no thank you" while I was actually thinking "What the crap man--You're lucky my mouth is full of instruments and I'm hopped up on painkillers or I might have to fight you."

But I’ll tell you what, he was pretty surprised that I wanted to keep my gap. Because to him it seemed like an imperfection. When to me, it is something that is perfect, for a variety of reasons: It does come from my mama, I can squirt water through it, it makes my s's whistle, and of course, last but not least, people with gaps are inherently good kissers. It's science.

So I guess the moral of this whole story is that even though we have imperfections, it’s better to embrace them than hide them or wish them away. Because in reality, our little imperfections are what make us perfectly imperfect.