Unit Five
Reading Selection Two:
You Don't Have to Be Perfect
By Harold S. Kushener
The more I, as a clergyman, have dealt with people's problems and the more I have looked at my own life honestly, the more convinced I am that a lot of misery can be traced to one mistaken notion: we need to be perfect for people to love us.T
Nothing can make us feel worse about ourselves than the conviction that we don't deserve to be loved. And nothing will generate that conviction more certainly than the idea that when we do something wrong, we give God and the people closest to us reasons not to love us.* T
We may have gotten this message of perfection from parents who genuinely loved us and demonstrated that by correcting our every trivial mistake and by constantly urging us to do better. We may have gotten this message from teachers who praised only perfect papers and showed impatience when we did something wrong. I once observed a second-grade class taught by a so-called gifted teacher. For a spelling drill, she divided the class into two teams and gave each child a letter of Sorry, your browser doesn't support Java(tm). the alphabet. She'd call out a word, and if it included your letter, you had to race to the front of the room to help spell the word. Your team got points for completing the word first and lost points for every missing or extra letter. In half an hour I saw several children sharpen their spelling skills, and several others absorb the lesson that they were slow and stupid and had cost their team points.* The disapproval was clear in the teacher's voice. I left wondering whether it was worth it.T
We should always struggle to be as good as we can, but being human can never mean being perfect. We face situations so complex that no one could possibly get them right all the time. Psychiatrist David Burns writes of a prominent attorney who dreaded making mistakes or losing a case for fear his colleagues would no longer respect him. When he shared this fear with them, he discovered to his surprise that his colleagues liked him better when he made mistakes because they saw him as more human.* T
In the same way, I can remember times I had to tell my children I was wrong about something and how fearful I was that they'd lose respect for me. But I was astonished to find that they loved me all the more for being willing to admit my mistakes. They needed to be assured of my integrity more than of my perfection.T
Sometimes, though, people cannot handle our mistakes. Perhaps our parents need us to be flawless, or our mates harp on our failures because they want us to improve. Perhaps our friends are unforgiving because our failure touched them at a vulnerable time.T
These responses can make us feel guilty. But before taking on that guilt, we need to ask ourselves whether it's truly warranted.* T
Some years ago two elderly women in my congregation died the same week in January. One afternoon I visited both families. At the first home, the oldest son said to me, "it's my fault that Momma died. I should have insisted on her going to Florida, gotten her out of this miserable cold weather. If I had done that, she would still be alive today.T
I tried to console him, then made my way to the second family's home, where the oldest son told me, "I feel it's my fault that Mother died. If only I hadn't insisted on her going to Florida. The long plane ride and the abrupt change of climate were too much for her."T
If it turns out that our guilt is appropriate, we should be careful that the emotion attached to the deed, not to ourselves.* The husband  who betrays his marriage vows and the wife who abuses the family credit card should feel guilt. Guilt is useful as a motivator to change. But it is useless and destructive when it paralyzes the person with a sense of unworthiness and unlovability.* T
When we do something wrong, we create a situation in which the good part of our self is at war with our weak, selfish side. We lose the sense of wholeness that enables us to do things that matter to us.* T
The hardest—and most personal—sermon I ever gave in 30 years as a rabbi was on Yom Kippur, one year after our son had died at age 14. It's on this Jewish Day of Atonement that we atone, or make our split, imperfect selves at one. I knew my sermon would have to be a major statement about what losing a son had meant to me and to my faith, and how I could go on believing in a world where young children died.T
I took my text from a little book called The Missing Piece, which I can describe only as a fairy tale for adults. It tells the story of a circle that was missing a piece. A large triangular wedge had been cut out of it. The circle wanted to be whole with nothing missing, so it went around looking for its missing piece. But because it was incomplete and therefore could roll only very slowly, it enjoyed the sunshine. It found lots of different pieces, but none of them fit. So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching. T
Then one day the circle found a piece that fit perfectly. It was so happy. Now it could be whole, with nothing missing. It incorporated the missing piece into itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, it could roll very fast, too fast to notice the flowers or talk to the worms. When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled so quickly, it stopped, left its found piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away.T
The lesson of the story, I suggested, was that in some strange sense we are more whole when we are missing something. When we accept that imperfection is part of being human, and when we can continue rolling through life and appreciating it, we will have achieved a wholeness that others can only aspire to.* That, I believe, is what God asked of us—not "Be perfect," not "Don't ever make a mistake," but "Be whole." T
And at the end, if we are brave enough to love, strong enough to forgive, generous enough to rejoice in another's happiness, and wise enough to know there is enough love to go around for us all, then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other living creature will ever know.T
We can re-enter Paradise.T
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