The Quest

I was recently reminded of a fundamental question which my all-time heroine, Carrie Bradshaw, once posed: Can you have it all?

People are constantly searching for the perfect job, the perfect partner and the perfect friends, yet is there such a thing as being able to have it ALL? Or is the quest for the perfect threesome simply a way to distract ourselves from what we really have?

I have a charming friend who had amazing jobs, a killer social life, yet no girlfriend. He was constantly complaining that he didn’t have that special someone in his life and that his life was worthless. He was completely oblivious to the fact that he did have an amazing career and friends who were supportive and fun. When I recently engaged in a power lunch with him he happily informed me that he had now found the perfect woman for him. So he had it all. Not quite- he then went on to tell me that his professional life was falling to pieces; all of a sudden. So as soon as he got himself his damsel in distress, he lost his career. Karma?

In life, we are drilled to go higher, faster and better with each single step. We are taught that there is no limit to the sky; that we are to soar higher than anyone before us. From childhood on, we are taught that we NEED to have it all in order to be someone. What happens then is that this idea gets installed in our heads and we feel like failures when we don’t have it all. People who have amazing careers and wonderful friends despair over a girlfriend. Beautiful couples go insane over the perfect job, people with loving friends search for boyfriends to make them complete. When did we stop seeing the big picture? Just because you don’t have a dream job doesn’t mean your worthless, not having a partner doesn’t mean you’re incomplete. This quest for perfection has turned us into maniacs who forget the most important thing: WE ARE NOT PERFECT so HOW can we expect to live a perfect life. Perfection is an awful concept because it’s unattainable. Look at celebrities like Sandra Bullock: beautiful, talented with a cheating husband. Marilyn Monroe: Stunning yet so lonely. Or take my favourite designer, Marc Jacobs: amazing career, talent, cute boyfriend yet a past with drugs. None of these talented and amazing people were perfect yet they manage to take their assets and turn them into something amazing.

We need to stop trying to achieve the unachievable and let go of striving for perfection because, imagine what would happen IF we ever manage to reach it: we can only go down from there! Stop trying to perfect yourself and accept yourself with all of your shortcomings- you may not be supermodel height, yet you’re still beautiful. You may not have a boyfriend but you’re the one your friends rely on. You may not be editor in chief of the wonderful InStyle yet the readers of your communal newspaper love your short stories.

We may never be able to have it all, but we are able to have all that really matters!