Imperfect

I expressed some stances in my earlier post on this blog. I called the post “Perfect” because it had to do with the impression that we need a perfect life to grow as human beings. Or that having everything we ever wanted necessarily means happiness. Or that having things others think we should have is a measure of the person.

There are different forms of perfect. In my hometown, it is married life, a house arranged in provincial taste and children, jobs that give financial security and little pleasure in the work itself. Some aim higher as there are many contents to fill in the form of perfect. Of course, it is not always that gloomy, and some people enjoy genuinely happy lives in the province, even some who made space for acceptance of their alternative lifestyles. So do I envy people who made it perfect for themselves? Do I think it is all a shallow compromise? I get a lot of trolling once I make my point on that. My answer is; these questions make no sense at all! My point is somewhere else; it is to encourage myself and others to thrive despite the imperfect circumstances.

To make it more clear, I used the magnifier—lives of brilliant people who thrived despite unfavourable circumstances. In the post on Van Gogh and Slava Raskaj I tried to explain what I mean. I tried to describe the epic battle of someone who is trying to create despite illness and despite having a kind of life where you don’t have much to lose.

I wanted to do the recap to make my point; people can grow and create, risk and challenge themselves despite things (seemingly) not going great for them. Who has the right to talk down on them from a perfect or seemingly perfect position?

Keats got tuberculosis in his twenties, and it was a terminal illness at the time. He died when he was 25, his life was hardly perfect, but his poetry is almost there. I am not saying everyone can leave Opus Mangum, but then again, you never know who it will be, right? Maybe someone who has it all sorted out, of course, someone who drew better cards than Keats.

Still, a glance at things through a magnifier- lives of the greats who also struggled shows that personal growth, the achievement and happy moments is not only for those who get or seemingly get what they always wanted. So no, I am not trying to say feel envious, think as if missing out on things, I want to say thrive because the best of us, the most talented of us, the most decent of us can have it imperfect.

I don’t know the cure for the people who can’t see that even everyday people like me mean the world to someone and can enrich lives. The art of living well is rather democratic. There are many ways to practice it, and I don’t see why some would be privileged. That is all.

Photo by Tamara Bellis on Unsplash

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