On mornings where my day starts in the office, I log into the alarming number of programs I will be bouncing between for the next 8 hours, and then open Aol.  It might be old school, it might be less intellectual than other sites, but I find it easy to navigate in the two minutes I have.  Coupled with the Skimm it gives me all the world’s news I need to know about in a succinct, sarcastic manner.  Two of my favs.  Get to the point and do it with no platitudes.

My order is this:

  1. Main headlines
  2. Sports (the Cavs NEED a win tonight)
  3. Entertainment

Oddly, that’s always been the exact same order I’ve read USA Today since I was a kid:

  1. Blue
  2. Red
  3. Purple

I found it too cliché that the Money section is green, so I refuse(d).

After zipping through the first two section reads, I clicked on the Entertainment link and found this horrifying, yet intriguing, headline: “Jennifer Love Hewitt apologizes for her looks.”

For those of you who don’t know me well yet, I hate expectations (because they are meaningless letdowns created by some fool who is trying to project his or her own wrecked sense of what people “should” be like) and I hate labels (because, don’t box me or anyone else in.  Being squished is claustrophobic and limiting and dumb. Plus, “You might be a racist if…”)

So now I’m curious.  To whom was Jennifer Love Hewitt apologizing and more to the point, why??

Turns out her comments were pretty funny.  The short version is, she made her first red carpet appearance in four years and just kind of forgot what it entailed.  The preparation, the time commitment, the interviews.  In other words, the expectations.

Now, I haven’t seen JLH in any sort of movie or TV show since Party of Five.  I know, it dates me, but really the reasons I watched that show were valid: My favorite book as a young girl was The Boxcar Children (and now the orphans had a house), and I wanted to date Scott Wolf.  At least for a few episodes, then I wanted to date Matthew Fox.  You know, the killer smile and laugh and fun guy vs. the more pensive and mysterious and brooding guy.  What’s a girl to do!

Except turn in weekly and bust on Jennifer Love Hewitt for being all platitudinal in her overdramatic efforts as Scott Wolf’s girlfriend.  You need to “find yourself” every episode?  You don’t know what to do?  Seriously?  Let me help you – you are in Scott Wolf’s house!  The one that never has any parents around!

At any rate, JLH went on to apologize because she had forgotten what everyone else expected – perfection.  Hollywood glamour.  More than just a regular ‘ol human being.

She had her kids in tow and said something to the effect that it was a thousand degrees out (hence her frizzy hair and glistening face), and one of her kids had just thrown up or something.  In a self-deprecating manner, she basically said, “Forgive me for being a Mom who is just like the rest of you.”

Honestly, the older I get, the more I realize none of us have a THING to apologize about with regard to what other people think of us.  That’s on them.  So if you don’t like me or the amount of effort or lack thereof that I put in to doing life for the day – cool.

It’s exhausting trying to please other people and no one should spend an ounce of their energy trying. Ultimately, we’ll always fall short because people’s “please me scale” changes constantly.  One day, doing dishes is enough.  But the next day?  The next day you better whip up a Chef Wars worthy meal followed by a Cake Boss worthy dessert and THEN clean up the friggin kitchen looking good.

Okayyyyy.  Be right there.

The point is this – we are all moving targets with the feelings, the expectations, the labels, the consistency.  And that’s fine and reasonable because we ARE in fact, regular ‘ol human beings.

Which is why it’s imperative to see both ourselves and one another as God sees us: as enough.

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