Perfection is a myth

The holidays will be here soon. Food, family, and fun? Perfect celebrations? For some people. Some of the time. Maybe not for everyone.

If you read blogs of others that you do not know, you might begin to compare their families, their homes, their holiday experiences with your own, and let's face it, only the best pictures, stories and quotes will be posted. I know I've done this. But,they're not the whole story, people. They have food spills, arguments, sick children, relatives who don't get along, and other problems that you will not hear about unless they are very real in their blogs. You will see the spectacular table settings, the delicious (and generous) amounts of food, the smiling relatives and the perfectly clean house. No dirty socks forgotten under the sofa will make it on their blog photos. The argument with the husband/wife/child will not be documented there. The overdone rolls or forgotten dish in the refrigerator will not be pictured. Neither will the crying child or the critical mother-in-law.

Just keep in mind that we are all human, all frail, and all flawed. We tend to hide the ugly stuff and present to the world our best. It may not last long, it may not even be real, but that's what's making it into the blogs and onto the Facebook page! We, in our arrogance, want everyone to envy us, think of us and our situation as better than we know it to be.

I remember hearing Oprah interviewed many years back about her famous weight-loss show where she pulled out a wagon of fat and appeared in size 10 jeans on her talk show. The wagon was to symbolize how much fat she really lost (67 pounds). In this interview, Oprah admitted that she basically starved herself for weeks just to force herself into those pants! She also said very honestly that immediately after the show's taping, she couldn't stand wearing the tight pants anymore and when she took them off, she was never able to get them back on! I'm betting that many viewers were determined to be a size 10 after seeing the "fake" demonstration by Oprah that day -- even people who were never MEANT to be a size 10!

My husband and I used to be somewhat jealous of his childhood friend, a father of six, who seemed to always have the house perfect and his and his wife's children in perfect obedience. He showed us some of their videos of Christmases past where all the kids were kind, grateful and happy. We commented on how we wish we could raise a family like that when he started laughing and said, "Oh, I guess I should tell you we always tape over the bad stuff." We asked what he meant. "If the kids start arguing or anything at all goes wrong while we're recording, we just rewind and tape over it." He was completely serious. And when I think of all the time we wasted wanting a family just like his!

Maybe this year, we can just take small steps toward being more transparent, more real, more human. Maybe, just maybe we can talk about the casserole that didn't turn out right, the turkey that we forgot to take the giblets out of (like the first one I ever cooked!), and the drunk uncle sitting in the corner of the living room for 7 straight hours. Okay, okay, maybe not the uncle. We need to keep SOME privacy in our families and protect people's feelings. I get that.  But please let's not pretend we live at Disneyland where none of the princesses makeup ever gets smudged and there is not even a gum wrapper on the ground!

So take the pictures of the nice celebrations. Post the cute quotes by the children. Give everyone the Norman Rockwell version of your Christmas dinner or your Thanksgiving brunch, but think about including a laugh or two about something that went wrong, something unplanned that happened, or just something other than perfection. And we can all be human together.