No One Is Perfect
No one is perfect
No one is perfect
Leo Michel Abrami
I know that it is a low-brow thing to do and I am ashamed of myself for doing it. I will confess it to you: I read “People” magazine from time to time. I don’t bring it into my house, you understand, that would be too much, but when I go to the barbershop, where nobody knows who I am and when nobody is looking, I read “People” magazine. And do you know what I learned from my reading? I have learned that nobody is perfect and that nobody has it all.
The moment you start reading about the lives of celebrities, you find out that they too have their full share of tsores as everybody else. They are suffering from the same problems we all have. One of them is going through a messy divorce, another has checked herself into a drug abuse rehabilitation center, another has a child who is severely handicapped and still another has squandered his fortune.
You would think that these people have it all, exceptional fame, considerable wealth, glamorous homes and the svelte bodies we all dream about, but guess what: many of them are living what Henry Thoreau once called “lives of quiet desperation” and, in many cases, lives of noisy desperation too.
From reading ‘People’ magazine, you soon learn that these privileged people, are not the most happy bunch we think they are. Their lives are not what we thought at first. Judging by the number of suicides, of alcoholics and drug dependents, emotionally and financially bankrupt movie stars in Hollywood, one should have no reason to be envious of them.
No one of us would wish to exchange our personal tsores for theirs. If we were to put our bags of trouble under a tree and told to pick up one of the bags, there is a good chance that we would take back our own bag.
Nobody has it allbecause we are all human beings and we are not perfect. Appearances may not tell us the whole story about people. Take this beautiful young lady; on the day of her wedding, she seemed to have it all. She had charm and beauty and she was marrying a prince. No one would have believed that a few years later, she would become so unhappy as to be compelled to seek a divorce from her royal husband. Princess Diana’s life and death are a reminder of this sad truth.
Another lesson, we might learn from reading the chronicles of famous people, is that no one knows it all for they too make mistakes at one time or another. Those who think it will not happen to them, are fools. Many stupid people think they will be the exceptions, but concerning these people, Albert Einstein gave us a good assessment. He said on one occasion “there are two things that are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; concerning the universe, however, I have not yet found a definite proof.”
Yet, there are people who think they know everything about life, as if they were sent by God. They would like you to believe that they know it all, whether it concerns financial matters, politics and even religion, and you cannot argue with them. Their arrogance, however, is often blinding their judgement, because we all need some help on occasion. As a general rule, women seem to be less presumptuous in this respect. Joan Rivers commented recently “Do you know why more and more women are sent on space missions? It’s because if a woman gets lost in some place, she will most likely stop and ask for directions, many men won’t…”
Some famous CEOs of giant corporations thought they knew it all. They would pay no attention to the warnings of their advisers and as a result, their businesses ended in shambles; it happened in Wall Street and the gulf of Mexico, and in many other misadventures. It is because no one is perfect and is above our human limitations. No one is self-sufficient and all-powerful.
Nobody can do it all by himself. We often need the help of others in order to achieve an important project and that is why we must help each other if we want to enjoy prosperity in our midst. We must work together with the members of our family and the community, if we want to achieve meaningful results. These are some of the lessons we can learn from reading ‘People’ magazine. Nobody has it all, no one knows it all and nobody can do it all by him/herself.
If we cannot have it all, then, we must do the best we can with what we have, said the sage Ben Zoma in the Talmud (Avot 4:1)
“Who is rich?” he asked: “he who is satisfied with his lot.” and he quotes a verse from the book of Psalms “When you eat of the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you” (Ps. 128:2.) There is no need to covet what belongs to our neighbor either as one of the Ten Commandments admonish us to do. If we stopped being jealous of others, we would not be tempted to lie, to steal or to do any harm to our fellow human beings. Indeed, envy and jealousy are