Average Perfection

My daughter is failing Algebra.
Ok, ok. She isn't getting an A.
In fact, her three quarters of As are turning to a C.
But I'm a law student and to me that is failing.
What sick and wrong thing has happened in my little brain to make that the case, I'm not entirely sure. But if she doesn't get it in gear, she can't take Geometry in 8th grade and then take the ACT in 9th grade.
See what I mean? A little sick.

To add to the sickness, I do have an excuse for her. She is bored to tears and just doesn't like to do her homework. But she is smart. Oh boy, is she ever smart. 100% on her quizzes and tests. 100%, baby.

I had a law school acquaintance tell me once that he is not competitive. He would never wish for anyone to do badly. He just really hopes he does better than everyone else. Hmmm.

I think we are in a difficult era for more reasons that just pornography and the internet. We are in the most competitive era ever. It makes me pause to wonder what then happens to charity. What then happens to compassion.

Around the block is the stay-at-home mom with her award winning home business or her award-winning blog or her blog being turned into a book or five kids who are all already accepted into Harvard.

Down the street is the mom with degrees from Stanford and Yale. She works just 10 hours a week, makes a fabulous income, and serves up homemade cookies with organic milk when her kids get home from school.

We look at each other and compare and criticize and compete.

I wonder when we stopped sharing our sorrows as well as our joys.

I wonder when we stopped sharing our weaknesses as well as our strengths.

In wonder when we stopped sharing our humanity as well as our celestiality.

The up-and-comers seem to have it extra hard. Education. Motherhood. Career. Uniquely and beatifully decorated home. Beautifully decorated children. Cleanliness, orderliness, perfection.

Perfection that we know is unattainable, yet we are so willing to believe that it exists in almost every life but our own. Something must not be right with us because no one else seems to have the challenges and weaknesses we do.

Perhaps some look for the gaps. But the gaps hardly ever show. In other people, that is. I see my gaps clearly and gaping all around me. The gap betwen the temple and my lived-in home. The gap between the mother I want to be and the mother I am. The gap between what I want to do and what I am supposed to do.

We have no permission to be average. Even people who read this and think, "Oh, I am average, boy am I average" either don't show it or really are not average. Probably the latter. Ever noticed how easy it is to see the divinity in others? Besides, average isn't acceptable, is it? We covet the top spots in the class. We persist in pursuing a dream we aren't even sure we want. And in the process we miss the real moments. The laboratory moments that show our humanity and perfect our eternity.

We are truly in an era when all the world is a stage and the men and women are all striving desperately to be players-unique players, strong players, beautiful players, talented player.

Anything but an average player.

Here's to being more average. And being willing to let the gaps show.