When I was younger, Madonna reigned supreme. I can still remember being in my childhood basement and belting out “Material Girl” as I played with my Barbies. Only I didn’t have the lyrics quite right. I was quite certain that she was singing “We avay avay in a material world and I am a material girl.” I felt absolutely zero concern that it made no sense. Zero concern that those weren’t even words in the English language. Later in life, I learned that the lyrics are ACTUALLY “we are living in a material world and I am a material girl”. Oh my gosh, that makes SO MUCH more sense.
Kids are notorious for mistakes like this. I remember when my daughter started writing a story and it began “Once a pon a time…” Just this week, I realized that I haven’t outgrown my ability to make the same kind of mistakes. I was reading one of my old newsletters about organizing that was written in the past 2 months. And I had written about throwing things half-hazardly back into the closet. The word that I meant to use was haphazardly. I decided to look the word up in the dictionary and sure enough, I’ve been mispronouncing it my whole life. My first reaction was, “Oh crap! I actually sent that out to everyone on my email list! They’re all going to think I’m an idiot!” But then Reason prevailed. “So my entire email list is going to see that I’m not perfect. The cat is out of the bag. I’m so glad that we cleared that up. You can expect more mistakes from me. Because mistakes are part of the human experience. And when I laugh at myself, I give you permission to also be perfectly imperfect. And we can show up authentically.
So here’s to showing up. To living life fully. To betting on yourself even when betting on yourself means you’re going to screw up every once in awhile. To getting knocked down. To getting up again. Here’s to you. You are a gift to the world. Thank you for showing up.
