The Gift of Imperfection

Mag­a­zine adver­tise­ments present fan­tasies of per­fec­tion. Within a sin­gle photo, a scene of grand arrival is depicted. Some­times it is the pic­ture of an extremely expen­sive wed­ding, with the “per­fect” cou­ple laugh­ing and toast­ing to a life ahead with no wor­ries. Other adver­tise­ments show a middle-aged man with a yacht and an expen­sive cigar. He has arrived. The good life is appar­ently for the healthy, rich, and attrac­tive few. The posed fan­tasy implies that if you buy what­ever prod­uct is being adver­tised, you too will have a shot at one of these per­fect moments.
The feel­ing engen­dered is fleet­ing yet very seduc­tive. Ah, the good life is mine if just in fan­tasy! The rest of life seems drab by com­par­i­son. You turn the page. You close the mag­a­zine and put it back on the shelf. Your real life has returned. That is the good news. Gen­uine hap­pi­ness is actu­ally found in the mess on your desk. It springs to life while you do the mun­dane tasks around the house. It is more at home in the imper­fec­tions than in the brief Camelot moments that visit us so rarely.
Per­fec­tion­ists are truly a mis­er­able lot. They are haunted by imper­fec­tions rather than con­soled by them. The time between peak moments is too long. Worse yet, they try to top their pre­vi­ous high with an addi­tion here or a new pur­chase there. What they can­not nego­ti­ate is the bio­logic clock and liv­ing on a planet that has built in uncer­tain­ties — cou­pled with the grim real­i­ties of suf­fer­ing and death. Arrivals are short-lived. There is more jour­ney ahead no mat­ter where you are in life. Life’s great­est moments, no mat­ter how sat­is­fy­ing, can­not be cap­tured.
This does not mean that you do not savor a moment here and there. It does mean that those moments are per­fect because you have embraced their imper­fec­tions. You do not have the per­fect house or model looks, but you still enjoy life. Your fears, your bills, your regrets — all go into the hap­pi­ness for­mula. They are the dark lines that serve as the nec­es­sary con­trast to the brighter pic­ture. They give it char­ac­ter. The old famil­iar car seat, the favorite rum­pled old jacket, or even the well-worn rou­tine can res­ur­rect that deeply con­sol­ing sense beyond the pretty pic­tures of some other imag­ined life. Your real life has more to offer than any por­trayal designed with the pri­mary pur­pose in mind of get­ting some of your money. Embrace it — warts and all.