When she was asked about the casting for The Force Awakens, Carrie Fisher said “They didn’t want to hire me; they wanted to hire about three fourths of me….” Lingering over that observation, I remember a story:
A lad ripped a phone number from an ad taped to a lamp-post, an ad for guitar lessons. He met with his new teacher, a shaggy-haired, Earth shoe-wearing, faded t-shirt clad guy. The lad learned how to hold the guitar, how to place his hands on the strings, and how to play some chords. After about an hour his teacher smiled and nodded, “Yep, good enough.”
We push our children to get all “A’s,” let ourselves be made to believe that making Varsity as an 8th-grader is key, and get pushed into more community service than Mother Teresa would have had time for. Women are expected to have a bikini body two months after giving birth. Women of a certain age strive to look a half of that age and to weigh (thank you Ms. Fischer) a quarter that. But since we can never be quite all we are told we can and should be, I offer, instead, being good enough.
Good enough to stop and see the exhaustion in a cashier’s eyes, good enough to let a harried driver pass us without giving them a rude gesture, good enough to let our children be children, and good enough to ourselves, once in a while, to give ourselves a pat on the back.
2015 was not a great year, but yep, it was good enough.
A lad ripped a phone number from an ad taped to a lamp-post, an ad for guitar lessons. He met with his new teacher, a shaggy-haired, Earth shoe-wearing, faded t-shirt clad guy. The lad learned how to hold the guitar, how to place his hands on the strings, and how to play some chords. After about an hour his teacher smiled and nodded, “Yep, good enough.”
We push our children to get all “A’s,” let ourselves be made to believe that making Varsity as an 8th-grader is key, and get pushed into more community service than Mother Teresa would have had time for. Women are expected to have a bikini body two months after giving birth. Women of a certain age strive to look a half of that age and to weigh (thank you Ms. Fischer) a quarter that. But since we can never be quite all we are told we can and should be, I offer, instead, being good enough.
Good enough to stop and see the exhaustion in a cashier’s eyes, good enough to let a harried driver pass us without giving them a rude gesture, good enough to let our children be children, and good enough to ourselves, once in a while, to give ourselves a pat on the back.
2015 was not a great year, but yep, it was good enough.
RSS Feed