I used to live with the idea that perfection was the ideal to aspire for—the ideal by which we should live our lives whether they be about perfect scores, perfect attendance or perfect relationships. Reality bites. Hard.
Adulting was more difficult than I ever imagined. As a child, I used to think that my life would be perfect the moment I didn’t have to get up early for school. I laugh about it now.
A workshop I attended classified me under the personality type that tended to idealize all relationships. Wow. I thought the speaker was some kind of psychic. She explained why I was always disappointed.
A friend also, once, had the temerity to tell me I had exacting standards. Well, that was news to me—at least, at that time. But in my quiet moments, I mulled about what she said and I realized she was right.
How could I have missed that? How could I have been so lacking in self-awareness? I guess because it’s hard to step back and look at one’s self from someone else’s perspective.
It’s easy to fall in love with ourselves. It’s not so easy to find fault with the selves we have lived with all our lives. Still, it pays to take a moment to find the humility to listen to what others say about us—especially the critical and unflattering reviews.
No one wants to hear about their flaws, faults and failings. But what do we have to lose by listening? If they are wrong, then, we get on with our lives. But if they are right, then, what a stroke of luck that someone stopped us in our tracks and led us to the right path.
We cannot only listen to the voices we like. We cannot only listen to the narratives we agree with. In the same manner, we cannot only read the stories with happy endings. But neither should we also be enamored by the relationships we believe to be perfect. Because they don’t exist.
All relationships are fractured, in some way. But I have found that it is in the fractures that we learn to glue ourselves and our relationships back together so that we come out stronger and better able to overcome future fissures.
I used to see beauty only in perfection. But I now see that there is greater beauty in hands that have toiled, in hearts that have bled, in faces that have lived through so many seasons.
Hardship and heartbreak give life depth because without them, we could never know the face of strength, courage and resilience. It is in adversity that we learn to develop understanding, compassion and empathy.
It should be peace rather than perfection we should aspire for. And we don’t arrive at a place of peace by aspiring for perfection. We arrive at a place of peace by coming to terms with life’s imperfections.
It’s a long, hard road to self-awareness, to change, to forgiveness. We are not defined by what we give up. Rather, we are defined by what we choose to hold on to—our compassion for humanity, our faith in the Divine and our hope for a future that transcends the trauma and pain of the past.