The perfection in imperfection

 We live our lives pursuing the concept of perfection, perfection in our bodies, academic life, finances, love life, work, etc. Basically, we spent the limited time we have in search of whatever notion we have of perfection… but we never stop a moment and ponder, ¿what if in this moment in time our so called “imperfection” is the true perfection? I often think about this, and every time it makes more sense to me.

It is not without reason that we often hear the phrase, “the journey is more gratifying than the goal”. Part of what makes an achievement so gratifying is the hardships we must endure to accomplish it, and what are those hardships but “imperfections” in our road towards the end goal?

We spend so much time worrying about achieving what we think is the perfect version of our lives (and that is not a bad thing unless it starts to that make you feel less or sad with yourself) that we have stopped appreciating our “imperfect” present. Don’t get me wrong, by no means I’m saying we shouldn’t try to improve ourselves, on the contrary, I think we must thrive to be the best version of ourselves, but not doing so by undervaluing our present or the things we are so lucky to have in our lives at this moment.

Nature shows us perfection in the imperfection in every fruit, plant, mountain and animal... not one is the same as the other but, nevertheless, they are all perfect.

Taking a little bit of a philosophical approach to the subject, I would like to quote Marcus Aurelius.

“Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power. Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay”

The interpretation I give to this quote is that our opinion is powerful, so much that when we keep telling ourselves that our present situation is imperfect or that true happiness lies in the future in that new job, or that new car or that new rise or whatever we are pursuing, we are going to end up truly believing it, and thus we are not going to be able to be genuinely happy in our “imperfect” present and, more times than not, we are going to find ourselves regretting not having enjoyed those moments. Contrary to what would happen if we embraced the thought that our “imperfect” present may actually represent true perfection and, by doing so, we could achieve simple, beautiful and true happiness.

Often, we act and think like racehorses, we are blinded to everything else that happens around us and the only thing we allow ourselves to see is the finish line at the end of the racetrack.

A common scenario is people talking about how they miss “the good old days”, they get nostalgic and paint a perfect picture of those good old days whether it is high school or college or childhood … what we don’t do is stop to think that probably our future self is looking back to this moment in time and refer to it as “the good old days”. What i am trying to express, is that we live our lives trying to achieve a perfect scenario in the future, or remembering the perfection of the past but we almost never think that maybe, just maybe, the “imperfection” of our present hides perfection.

During my life I’ve been lucky enough to live a lot of “perfect” moments, but I think I haven’t been wise enough to enjoy and live the “imperfect” ones, i hope that from this moment on we can all enjoy the perfection in our imperfection. I would like to end with a quote that perfectly express the point, from one of my favorite tv shows “The office”.

“The weird thing is now I'm exactly where I want to be. I've got my dream job at Cornell, and I'm still just thinking about my old pals. I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days', before you've actually left them.”

-Andy Bernard (The office)