Geneen Roth

but I will: as embarrassing and awful as it was to announce the wrong winner for best picture at the Oscars last night, it was also reassuring. People make mistakes. We all do. And some of them are terribly embarrassing and some of them are painful, but those feelings too are part of being alive. We’re here to experience the whole banana, the entire range and finally understand that no feeling is permanent, no situation is unworkable and that there is no way of doing this human life perfectly.

We tend to idealize and glorify celebrities and the truth is that they pee and they poop and they wake up cranky in the morning with their hair sticking straight up and with breath that smells like dirty socks. And although it apparently wasn’t the fault of Warren Beatty’s or Faye Dunaway’s, it doesn’t matter. Having a mistake made in the middle of what was supposed to be a glamorous event that was supposed to happen without a hitch is a way to pop the balloon of idealization and perfection. You and I have as much worth as Emma Stone or the girl down the street. No one has the goods on self-respect or value and I love that. I love that self-value is an inside job. And I love that when mistakes are made, after the finger pointing and brouhahas (and after we see our own part in what happened but without shame), it still and always gets down to the same thing: it happened. Take a breath. Come back to the body. Stop pointing the finger of blame at anyone, most of all yourself. Let’s practice this together.