What to do. What not to do. It is the week before Thanksgiving. Business is booming. The grandkids visited and the house is a mess. I need to finish my columns and my speech for a future speaking engagement. The cat is coughing up hairballs and the sun is shining. I want to play hooky but the innate sense of responsibility that is built in inside of my body is taking over.

What is it about us that makes us have a hard time being over responsible? What is it about us that makes it hard to balance our lives?

I feel I have a responsibility to my customers to get things back to them in a timely manner even if it means no lunches and 14 hour days. Why does it matter that my house will be a little messy when Thanksgiving arises? Five minutes after everyone is here it is a mess again. No one except me, really cares. I have a responsibility to create this perfect Thanksgiving meal. The grandkids expect Turkey and so do I but they would eat whatever. Their main joy is getting together with uncles and aunts and cousins. It is I who put the expectation on them.

It is me, all me. I create my own stress because of this picture perfect holiday that I have in my mind. The picture perfect is fictional just like most of my book writing. It only exists in the movies, on television and from Father Knows Best.

Our lives our messy, just like my house. People get sick, people get mad, people get stressed. Inthe midst of it all we miss the smile of a little child, the purr of a cat and the rousing noise of a shared football game all because we are insistant on keeping that perfect picture in our mind. We fail miserably at letting go of that perfect picture of a joyous holiday and replacing it with the joy of living the real life of the holiday with all its messes.

If I had the solution I would give it to you. I don’t. Perhaps we need to wipe  up the hairballs, laugh at the spilled gravy and be glad we are here to experience it. Perfect is kind of boring anyway.