Perfect!! What a word!!! We all want to hear it for ourselves. Our clothes, our lifestyle, our appearance, our spouse, our children, our social image, the way people perceive us, our parenting style, our social status; we want everything perfect. Well, is there anything called perfect in this world? What is perfect? Perfection is very relative term as what is perfect for one is imperfect for others.
The way our house looks, for example, is a sign of state of our life, but why the house is in mess is a very good question in itself. May be the person is doing “other things” in life or “more important things” in life rather than taking care of the house, or perhaps there is a child who is having a time of his life!! I have seen this situation when my little one was a toddler and the house was a mess, but one fine day, I looked more carefully and realized that the mess was actually unpolished, primitive creativity. I gave him little more time and realized that in each and every mess of the house, there was a little experiment(s) going on which the child was not able to express completely but just needed an understanding from the parent to support his creativity. Just imagine the joy on a child’s face when he was busy creating “mess.” We used to rather joke that ‘amount of mess is directly proportionate to amount of fun that the child had that particular day.’
Similarly, every person has his own priority. For some, looking good is a priority and for others, feeling good is a priority. Some feels happy in materialistic pleasure while others feel peaceful in spiritual environment. Everyone is right in his own way because everyone’s perception is different. A person’s life experience, personality type, life lessons and circumstances, expectations, goals, decisions, needs; everything is unique to the person. It can never match anybody in the whole world!!! So what is perfect for one can never be perfect for others. We decided what is perfect based on what has been taught to us but in reality, it is hardly perfect. I have observed the most “perfectionist” people are often most suffering individuals in life. Their life may seem perfect from outside but deep down things are far from perfect. They silently suffer from diseases, disorders, syndromes and personal crisis which an easy-going “not so perfect” person will not go through!!!
Sometimes, in trying to do things so perfectly actually we forgot to enjoy. Sometimes, in an attempt to pay attention to the detail, we forget about the big picture. I have seen many women get so obsessed by perfection during a major festival season that they have a panic attack on the day of the festival. What an agony!!! Was it supposed to be so stressful? What was the reason behind celebrating festival? We totally forget that we are here to enjoy life whatever it comes with (imperfections, of course) rather than stressing on making it perfect and wasting a beautiful life on silly ‘perceived ideas’ fed in our brain by influential people in our life, we must take the lead and decide what is good for us. After all, we are just human and irrespective of what others think of us, we are God’s unique creation so just respect yourself and enjoy being you, the imperfect self. Cheers!!!
Parul Rana 