Just wanted to share my editor's note from this month's issue of Good Housekeeping.
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We at the GH staff have what we call our “life pegs”—people
with seemingly perfect lives that we want for our own. You know the type: They
posts photos of their fabulous European getaways on Facebook, tweet about the
many fabulous blessings they receive on a daily basis, and Instagram their
fabulously made-up selves.
I used to look at all this evidence of perfection with envy.
But recently, a friend told me about how she thought my life was perfect, and she enumerated all the things
that made it so. “Some girls have all the luck!” she said. I was surprised and
flattered, but inwardly, I chuckled. See, at that very moment, I was going
through something major, but all she could see was what I chose to show the
world.
That made me think about our life pegs—if I could be seen as
having a perfect life at a time when it was so imperfect, then all these other women must have their own problems too;
they just choose not to show it. It made me wonder about what was going on
behind their beautiful selfies. And I was reminded of something we’ve been told
over and over again: Nobody is perfect. No life is perfect.
I’ve
thus decided to stop chasing after perfection. There are good lives, there are
seemingly better lives, but we all have our struggles. Instead of making over
every aspect of my life to make it just so, I’ve made over my mindset instead:
Life doesn’t have to be perfect for me to be happy.