Growing up, all we are taught about is to be perfect. This notion of perfection includes excelling at everything under the sun and be the best that is out there. It doesn’t matter if you are competing with one other person or thousands of them. You have to beat them to be perfect. At everything you do.
Students and children are often taught that they would be perfect only if they excel at academics, art, dance, music and sports (pardon me if I forgot any other category). And God forbid you are average at even one of them, you would not be deemed perfect anymore. This approach to life also hinders their growth in the later stages when they grow up to be adults who cannot comprehend what they want from their lives.
To me, this whole idea is ridiculous. How can a human being, an imperfection created by God, be perfect in every way? We are after all just another species on this earth and not some kind of robots, though they too are not exactly what we can call perfect. We are all ‘programmed’ to make mistakes. And we will make them.
If these mistakes or shortcoming make us any less perfect, so be it. Because I feel that imperfections are the only way to life. If you consider this for instance, a perfect man could never be happy. After mastering one aspect in his life, he will still feel empty inside, like his life is still not perfect because there exists another particular thing which he has not excelled in. Now he has to work hard for that. So instead of feeling guilty and unhappy that he is imperfect, why can’t he just be satisfied knowing he’s the best at one feat?
Only an imperfect person would have the passion and courage to take risks and actually do things in his life. Why, you may ask? Because he has nothing to lose. He is already not perfect for the world, so why not go another mile and do something new and challenging to his personality. The most that could happen is failure and since he is not afraid of it, it would not matter to him what others think of it. Maybe what he does will give some meaning to his life. At the end of the day, you could be perfectly imperfect for yourself and that is all what matters.