Done being perfect?

If you’re done being perfect this year, you have company. Lots of it. We’re all about to enter muck-it-up February, but feel free to rhyme that any way you want. That means it’s time to drop our resolutions and resume being annoying or selfish or compulsive. Hallelujah. By the end of February, a full 80 percent of us, sorry to say, seem to quit whatever silly thing we thought we had to change this year. Why not start in the beginning of the month and beat the crowd?

Wasn’t boosting your ego a resolution anyway?

In fact, to make certain you feel good about not being better, I invite you to add to the list I’ve created to recover my own selfconfidence. Although in my case, I’m sort of living up to my resolution by not succeeding. My commitment was to become more accepting of others. One could rationalize that giving myself a break fits that goal because I’m a person too.

And isn’t rationalization next to godliness, a gift we were given for the express purpose of surviving New Year’s resolutions?

So to come through this deflating time, I’ve created the “Why I’ll never be perfect” list, designed to remind me I came into this world human and because the technology isn’t quite there yet, I’ll probably leave it a deadbeat. The new list should help me accept myself the way I am, so I look more kindly upon others which could eventually lead to the progress I seek. It’s a theory. And why not concoct a theory. Otherwise, may as well stick with the old ones like the theory of evolution which is not always a given.

Where are our ape buddies when we need them?

So here goes, the “Why I’ll never be perfect” list so far. It’ll be your turn to chime in soon. I’ll never be perfect . . . Because there’s no such thing as perfect. Because I’m average. Because life is too short and I’m too short too. Because I’m too old, dumb, ugly, fat, skinny, lazy, dull. Because I think I’m getting a cold. Because perfect spelled backwards is tcefrep and no one wants to be that. Because no one will like me because they’ll be jealous. Because tomorrow is another day and what will I fix then.

Because only cats are purr-fect. Because nobody else is perfect

and I’ll be lonely. Because I don’t believe in miracles, at least not quite so much. Because I missed the boat carrying the right genes and I didn’t even know there was one, and there wasn’t. Because I wouldn’t be allowed to curse and then what would I say.

Because I love cereal without milk. Because I wasn’t in the Olympics and they still haven’t called. Hollywood either. Because

the world doesn’t need another idol. Because perfect is as perfect does and I don’t know what that means. Because it’s way too easy for me to be perfect and I want to try harder.

OK, now it’s your turn. Please add and subtract your own character defects. Go on take a little time and don’t worry. Not being perfect is like falling off a branch, like the apes.

When you’re done your list, say this:

Please excuse __________ from being imperfect today because _________ is burdened, as

one of God’s children, with all of the above. Or none of the above. But probably all. All of the above. Already. And the year has only begun. So much time left to get it right. Or wrong.

In the barely evolved 2018, how muck-it-up apeish can we be?