Perfect skin, perfect kids, perfect home, perfect life.
But perfect is not easy, it is hard, and mostly an unachievable target.
Striving for perfect often means stress, frustration, depression, a feeling of failure.
And while everything is supposed to be perfect, reality is far, far from it.
Because we too often forget, that the really beauty in life is the imperfect.
This piece was written as part of The Six Sentence Stories, hosted by the wonderful Ivy at Uncharted.
In my business (in psych) often you can find the issue somehow related to the person looking for perfection and an unrealistic ideal in whatever their situation is.My job is often in trying to decrease the expectation and accepting exactly what you said in that last line. Trying to accept the ordinary beauty in the imperfect.
ReplyDeleteSomething I've had to learn over a few very painful years, Ivy.. I've been telling hubby that he's perfect; when he replies that he's far from being perfect, I agree, but tell him that he's perfect for me, with all his imperfections. Because it's those that make life interesting!
DeleteWe live in a society obsessed with perfection. It can be very damaging besides being impossible to achieve.
ReplyDeleteExactly, Val. Especially because the bar seems to rise all the time. I've given up trying to achieve anything but rather enjoy my life as it is. Makes a much happier me!
DeleteLucky are those that see beauty in imperfection and the shallowness in its opposite.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree! It's the imperfections that make people or things interesting!
DeleteYou pretty much nailed it Stephanie. A nice reminder. And while there are certain areas we should strive for perfection - job performance, etc., the reality is... nothing is perfect! And there's nothing wrong with that.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that for example in our jobs or certain other areas, we should strive for perfection, where I define perfection as doing the best I can so that at the end of the day, I can be proud of my work. But it also include giving ourselves grace if we make mistakes. Only this week I was talking to a colleague, who mentioned that people who never make mistakes probably don't do any work :-) Thank you so much for your comment!
DeleteDid your blog seriously just eat my comment? And it was a good one, too! Ugh!
ReplyDeleteI love what you have here - it's one of my favorite sentiments. I think it's often about trying to find the extraordinary IN the ordinary things. There is such perfect beauty there if we but look.
It probably FEEDS in comments.. No idea, sorry, Lisa! Probably next time you copy the comment before hitting "publish", I do that on some blogs, just to be sure :-)
DeleteI agree.. Sometimes, the chipped plate is much more beautiful than the perfect plate, because it has a story.. :-)
yeah, to contrast the very, very good, there needs to be the not very, very good. I think I get it. nice one.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Clark :-) But sometimes, the not very, very good is indeed the very, very good!
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