I believe we are not supposed to find perfection. It surely is not easy to find!! It‘s like “Nirvana”. And life is more about imperfections. I read this quote somewhere a long time ago “Keep your expectations lower and you will never be disappointed”. At that time I didn’t know what it meant and wondered if that was even possible. We as human beings are greedy creatures; we aim for the highest, want the best…we are optimistic lot. Now I think I am beginning to understand what it means.
Perfection has a way of fizzling out. It disappoints people if and when they find it. All because it comes with expectations and it never turns out exactly like one expected. Imperfection on the other hand is more satisfying… first it is personal and then, it is not something shiny and polished but raw, ordinary and endearing.
They say “Journey is more important than the end”. If life is a journey, then perfection must be the end and nothing after that. But luckily we never do find perfection. It’s the genetic makeup of our species, that we are never satisfied. While striving to be perfect and satisfied, a man turns into a hungry beast…going from one kill to the next and searching for it in things he does; searching, enjoying, discarding…the cycle continues until he realises what he is doing is futile and that he doesn’t need it, the stuff which is like the apple of the garden of eden, a symbol, something to entice you.
I have realised good feelings like bad feelings do not last the way expectations and hope do. Like the time when you get a thing you have always wanted and it loses its appeal after some time. Or how one never forgets that one love who got away. I read a joke about a married man somewhere saying “I have been in love with the same woman for 25 years. But please do not tell my wife”. How things you find perfect are anticlimactic. Bad things are bad but good things are never enough. Like when you are reading a great book and you are enjoying it but when you are finished with it, you are not satisfied. You are almost there (where you want to be) but you still want something more and you go on to the next. Or when you have had a delicious meal and your stomach is so full but you are missing something… And I do not mean the dessert! You are watching a good movie or a TV show, you are happy while watching it but when it ends you are confused and have that strange feeling and not because it has ended.
The void, the hunger remains! As long as you can feel and think, you are never satisfied! You cannot attain that perfection, bliss or happiness that you imagined on any terms. There is no such state for us ordinary beings. On contrary, good and beautiful things which should make you feel more superior and more happy rarely make a difference.
It must be ying and yang, the pull and the push of things. How we want something and do not want it the next moment. Is it that we are never going to find what we are looking for because it cannot be found? Perhaps that is why it makes sense to watch a movie and leave just before the ending, read a book and not gobble it up and like the imperfections all the way. It is more fulfilling…
silentgal's blog 