This is something I find hard to fathom or deal with.
In earlier parts of our lives, very little is perfect. But it doesn’t matter for three reasons:
- We’re young. There’s a degree of built-in ‘Can’t be bothered-ness‘ to youth because we’re busy being young. Trying things for the first time. Working out who we are.
- There’s time to chase perfect later.
- For most people and most circumstances, everything can be mended or bettered with a little application and focus. Everything is (or seems) fixable.
Now I am older, things are starting to happen that mean perfect is impossible to achieve any more.
Even though lots of things are getting better. The baby, togetherness, adventure, new friends.
Mary
This year, Lisa’s mum died.
The photograph with this story at the 50odd website is Izobel with her granny a few days before granny died.
So what do we do now?
There is a shadow that won’t go away. No matter what we do. A blemish. A scar. An empty space.
An imperfection than can never be removed or repaired for as long as we live.
If our life were a jigsaw there is one piece missing.
This is awkward. Unsettling. Sad.
Imperfect
I guess all I can do is accept that imperfect is OK. This or something like this was always going to happen.
I’ll never accept that things can’t be better, of course. Much better.
But perfect is gone.
So what about you?
What do you do about this?
Do we have to settle for ‘better’, now there is no ‘perfect’ to aim for?
2 Comments
Perfect is the moment when you have achieved all you are capable of. When you have learned all you are going to learn. When you have met all the interesting people you are ever going to meet.
Perfect is both unobtainable and boring. Give me imperfect any day. That means there’s stuff still to be done, new things to learn, interesting people to meet.
Wake up. It’s a beautiful imperfect morning. Let’s go do something.
For me this means taking my very imperfect right knee to hospital. There is no hope of it ever being perfect again – to be honest, I don’t think we’ve evolved the perfect knee yet – but it will be better than it is right now – and with better comes a raft of possibilities: running, yoga, kicking a ball, that each help every subsequent day move a fraction towards perfect.
Shaughn thank you for this. I hope your hospital visit was OK. Especially as you were buzzing about in your motorbike last week.
I hope it all went well by the way. We’re donating a bit later today.
Have a great day!