I blame magazines, television and the suite of modern communication tools at our disposal... it seems that these days, none of us are good enough.
Even the most cursory glance over a magazine stand tells a story about the entrenched trend in our society to continually remind us that we are forever imperfect.
There is an abiding presumption, in self help books, in magazine columns, on reality shows, that we are all dissatisfied with ourselves and our lives, and somehow, we need to be shown a better way, another world, an alternate reality.
Magazine editors especially, bleat it to us in large fonts and photoshopped beauties that we're not thin enough, we're not smart enough, we're not healthy enough. We don't eat right, we don't think right, we don't even have sex right.
Advertising bombards us with messages that our hair's not shiny enough, our skin's not perfect enough and of course, we'll never, ever be young enough.
I, for one, am sick of it.
We have become a society that persuades us that we are imperfect and which so ardently rallies us against our own self acceptance.
We have become 'enculturated' into a state of perpetual dissatisfaction with who we are, with what we have, with where we are.
Happy staying at home? Forget it. Exotic places beckon and only then, can you be content.
Happy cooking ordinary meals? Forget it. You ought to be a Masterchef if you know what's cookin'
Nothing you do is right, and everything about the way you live must be re-engineered - to sell more books, to sell more advertising, to satisfy the relentless engine of commerce.
The result is that we are not permitted self acceptance, and nor, by association, gratitude.
For how can you be grateful if you're NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I blame it on those weazly old Christians of yesteryear, who force fed us on notions of humility and devices such as the Seven Sins.
These were mantras of social control and institutional power, developed specifically to ensure we heathens knew our place.
Amongst them was that evil, naughty, naughty sin of holding your head up and acknowledging and LOVING who you were and what you had were disallowed as a sin.
The Sin of Pride.
The result is that today, too many of us drown in a sea of discontent that is earnestly cultivated by the media.
Hold your head up? You can't buster. Remember, you're not thin enough? And, urggh, look at that dank, dismal hair.
But you can save yourself. Yes you can.
Just close your eyes and look inside you. You haven't changed since the day you emerged from your mother's loins.
Were you imperfect then? I don't think so.
