Perfect Imperfections

We are all different. We come from different backgrounds and were brought up with different values. But for those who have lived long enough to be self-aware, let’s agree on one point, shall we?

Life is never perfect. Life can never be perfect. And neither should it be.

This month I am about to reach my 25th lap around the sun. As I reflect upon the past two and a half decades, watching myself grow up stage by stage and reminiscing about all the things once desired by my younger self, it dawns on me half of them never really turned out the way I expected.

Yet, a sense of calm and tranquility sets in. While I still recalled countless moments of disappointment my younger self went through, I now look at it with a sense of amusement. After all , what is the big deal?

I am fully alive and grateful for this moment of being, for every moment of being. With a future ahead I look at those past experiences with a board grin, you know the what-a-dumbass-I-was sort of grin.

In retrospect, things didn’t need to be perfect, and neither did I.

So often along the road we let the fear of making mistakes and some notion of perfection hold us back. There is a guy who who is too insecure and self-conscious to ask the girl out. There is a worker who stays stuck in a job while he is looking for a perfect employment opportunity elsewhere.

Perfection, glamorous as it may sound, is just an excuse to justify our own fear and apprehension that keep us grounded where we are.

Ironically enough, the best way to be “perfect” is to constantly improve ourselves. The only way to constantly improve ourselves is to keep trying, falling, getting back up and retrying. Yet, the only way to do so is to get rid of any notion of perfection in the first place.

The only constant in life is change, and it is not necessary the most prepared who win in the game of life. Rather it is those who can commit the most passionately to their cause and who elect to do their best even if nothing works out exactly the way they expected.

To me, a happy life is a life full of passion, free from fear and analysis paralysis. To me, a happy life is an imperfect life, and by that I mean there is always room for me to carve, to shape, to mould and to put my own signature improvements on it.

After all, life is never perfect. Life can never be perfect. Life should never be perfect.

Originally published at http://khoainsydney.wordpress.com on August 18, 2019.