THE BEAUTY OF OUR IMPERFECTION








Pic.: Rajiv Sharma

“If you look closely at a tree you'll notice its knots and dead branches,
just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection
go together wonderfully.”

Matthew Fox


Today morning, the first thing I found myself saying in my mind was this:

“I m not perfect… The people around me are not perfect… The world is not perfect… The Life is not perfect…”

I found myself saying this, over and over again… today.

And then, I could feel a great deal of peace settling down in my heart!

I can trace the roots of, almost, all my inner unrest to the same source: expecting me to be perfect… people around me to be perfect… this world and life to be perfect. And, because they are not – and they can’t be, won’t be – and, because I am unable to see or accept this reality, I keep fighting my inner phantoms… Yes, almost, all my mental unrest comes from my inability to let go this need in me to see everything run perfectly…

Peace eludes us as long as we believe in this myth called ‘perfection’… the perfect me, the perfect people, the perfect world and the perfect life… As long as we live with this myth – this ‘lie’ - our small irritants will rule our lives as deadly nightmares… They will stand before us and scare us as deadly dinosaurs!

Accepting ourselves and others - accepting this world and life - as imperfect is, in deed, a great lesson we all need to learn early in life… and, we need to keep re-learning it, again and again, too… For, invariably, we forget this lesson… We tend to make the same mistake, time and again: expecting ourselves and others to be perfect, the world and life to be so.

So, as it happened to me, early this morning, something from somewhere comes back to us to remind: “Hey, everything and everyone is dented… And, that’s something so beautiful about living!”

It is… It is…!


GERALD D’CUNHA


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