Imperfect Perfection

“I am a perfectionist.” We all would have heard this statement at least once by someone we know closely or some unknown stranger or may be by our own conscious. Being a perfectionist or being around a perfectionist are both equally stressful. When we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Ah! I look perfect”, we actually see our right as the mirror image’s left. So, our visual of perfection gets reversed right there. Imagine the strive for perfection with so many factors and people involved in that journey.

I want a perfect dress for my brother’s wedding, I want to host a perfect party, I want my house to be perfect, how perfect is her life?, all these thoughts come and go during lot of instances in life. As we move on with that phase and look back we might not be happy with the perfection we achieved in that wedding, party, house or even with the person’s life we admired. When we yearn for someone else’s perfect life, we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg. When Titanic can be destroyed by the iceberg, imagine what can happen to humans. The capacity to understand our capability and make way to our dreams is life. Each step forward is defined by the struggle of the back foot and the strength of the foot which is kept ahead. During this process we rejoice, compromise, adjust, get disappointed, be happy, sad etc., but never stop. Everything happening within us is usually due to the want that arose by how we showcase ourselves to the society. The journey of life becomes a struggle when we misjudge our want as need. We always think what others have is perfect. May be because we grew up listening to stories where everything is perfectly picturized in our imagination and slowly unknowingly we fantasize pleasure as what someone else has. Other’s life is just like the stories we listen to. We know only as much as we can think of for their life to be perfect and always keep wanting that perfect life.

During my school days, mathematics was the only subject where we could get a perfect score and all other subjects had subjective answers, so our teachers always told there is scope for improvement and thus no 100/100. As years passed, we started seeing perfect scores in all exams, be it 10^th, 12^th or any competitive exams etc. Here perfection lies in reproducing what is learnt. Its just like a photocopy. But will you be happy if I photocopy my life and give it to you?(by my life I mean the life of the person who you admire to be as yours😊) When we as parents misunderstand the concept of perfection, it becomes difficult to teach kids the same. Perfection is defined by each one in their own way and since life is not a mathematical equation with only one value for “x”, every one is right in their imagination of perfection.

My mother and I have quite an opposite taste in everything like food, clothes, design, you name it, and she likes what I don’t, and I like what she thinks is average or sometimes even bad. When she cooks something and thinks it is the best thing she prepared, I eat and say “I don’t like it so much” and something which she doesn’t like, by now we are sure that I will love it. Me and my mother agree on one thing and that is mango is the best fruit but here comes the twist. My daughter hates it. Just the sight of it scares her. We can never plan to have a perfect dinner for each other no matter how much we want to do it. Taste in food is very meagre example to define perfection. Life is vast than this. So running behind having everything perfect in life is just like building a sand castle at the sea shore. It can never last long, nor can we get it complete as we plan. More so, just like how we end up blaming the waves for washing it away, we start looking for reasons to blame for the failure.

We think sometimes, compromising on few things in life is disappointing and painful but have you imagined, striving to reach the golden pot at the end of rainbow can be devastating too.

            What we have is life.
            What we can make out of it is happiness.
            What we get is love.
            What we can give is gratitude.

When everything falls in place, automatically everything looks perfect at that moment but when you try to stretch, it no longer remains as a moment and it becomes life again. Life becomes a normal routine and we forget that this is the perfection which once made us happy.

Perfect is a fairy tale.
            Perfection is a struggle.

Fairy tale can be as beautiful as we can imagine, and struggle can be as painful as we allow it to be. If struggle can’t sound perfect, then neither can perfection be perfect. Lead your life to make it worthwhile and not perfect. When we focus on the end point, we forget to enjoy the journey.

Think of a perfect moment in life. You end up thinking everything which lead to that moment more than the moment in itself. A perfect life is just like an end point where there is no scope for more and hence there is no fun to explore.

Memories are made by imperfection and perfection makes just that one moment.
Life is full of memories which makes those moments memorable. Be happy to have an imperfect perfection.