The Unexpected and The Quest for Perfection
I recently attended my first class after a halt of about 3 years. It felt longer than that. I was a minute late in entering the class and the professor had already started talking about the syllabus. I found a seat in the middle row and quickly settled into the chair, opened my notebook and my laptop. I noticed a few stares in the class that were thrown towards me, including that of the professor’s. They weren’t all necessarily frowning, most were surprised and were wondering what this tall lady in heels, pants and a very formal jacket, polished hair and face is doing between people in shorts, hoodies and ruffled hair. As the lecture went on, it reminded me of another course I took a few years ago, and the horrible experience I had during and after that. My friends know what I am talking about. I felt a wave of physical discomfort run through me as I remembered that. It was truly horrifying, what I had been through during that time. For the sake of keeping this story and my thoughts in present, I would not go in details of that event, just that I felt uncomfortable remembering that. While sitting through the class, an assortment of thoughts ran through my mind once the discomfort subsided. I thought about perfection in life and about how I have been reminded recently about the need to pursue it. I am writing today about the fragments of ideas that ran wild in my mind as it ran nubivagant in that class and the week that followed.
Perfection is a concept I have tried to incorporate and imbibe in me ever since I could remember. I get that from my father, he is a perfectionist of small everyday stuff. He gets that from his father I think. I have seen them both fold little plastic bags into clean folds, and store them for future uses. I have seen my father perform routine stuff to an annoying level of perfection. I have seen him fold socks, stow shoes, park his car neatly and very close to the walls. I have observed him feed my sister and me small morsels of food after immaculately filling the chapati piece folded into a cone with sabzi. I have observed him separate nuts and bolts and different kind of screws which were spare in our household and store them in various small boxes to reuse and re-purpose in future. I have seen him get upset when small things weren’t in order. All this intrinsically made me a person that strives for perfection in little things. It’s these little things I have inherited from his daily habits, that make my friends call me an annoying perfectionist since childhood. I have inherited the engineering, analytical, organizational and administrative mindset from him as well.
Over time I realized though, that while I strove for perfection in little things, I was losing balance and sight of bigger things. I saw the other side of the coin and it affected my inherent tendency to be perfect in every little thing. I started to let the little things slide in order to focus on bigger stuff in life. It started small, but as I grew up into my own personality, I was more drawn to play between perfection and madness. Eventually I followed my own path and found the sweet spot between chaos and order where my mind was happy. Today I am a different person than I used to be merely a few years ago. I have evolved tremendously in past couple of years. Lately I keep swinging between excellence and pandemonium. It is quite possibly visible in my writing style which swivels between casual and extremely formal.
Yet I am not perfect. Not by a far shot. I have flaws. Major ones. Having said that, how does one go about in their search for perfection? Who decides what’s perfect and what’s perfect for you? Am I doing this right? Did I make the right choice by coming back to school? These were some questions looming in my head as I went about that first lecture as a student in 3 years. It’s like meditating. So many thoughts, yet you choose to be numb to all of them and focus on the theorem the professor was trying to prove. More swinging, I started to enjoy the class a little and paced my thoughts in such a way that I was able to find gaps in time when I could catch up on my thoughts, acknowledge them, and return to what’s being taught in class so that I do not miss making notes. This was the first Monday of the spring semester and my first class as a student in 3 years. It was unexpected, in the true sense of the word. I never imagined going back to school, or attending a class as a student again, and that class would be taught by the professor whose last course truly messed up my Master’s program and changed my life, when I walked out of my last class as a student in 2017.
I enjoyed myself, nevertheless.
I came back home after I was done for the week on Friday, and thought about the 30 years I have lived so far, and how much perfection was sought in those. I made tea for myself and sat beside the wood-burning fireplace with crackling sound of fire warming my heart. I was filled with an overwhelming sense of pride in the distance I have traveled from being the privileged village girl that I started out as, who shook the path as she moved and even as she fell and got wounded multiple times, to the grown up, fairly mature, reasonable adult I’ve become. I was filled with fatigue and pain as well, from the shin splints from my recent return to running, which I came to find are quite painful. I was proud, of everything. The later it got into the night, more anxious I became. I thought more about perfection and excellence. I was anxious because I was anticipating to make a life changing decision that night. But more on that later. The marmoris on the river reflecting the moonlight complimented the musical psithurism of the fallen leaves. I realized I had fallen asleep and it was already midnight. I woke up to the numbness of the alexithymia that engulfed my thoughts.
After a while, spent reflecting, pondering, grovelling, and cringing about my inability to make that life changing decision, I decided to continue wondering about my idea of perfection and where I stand on it today.
I have two unique propositions that define my personal conviction about perfection today:
- Wabi-sabi: Have you ever stopped at the sight of mayhem in the world and thought to yourself that there is so much beauty in chaos, in dysfunctional world, imperfect people? The feeling of wabi-sabi is my eternal, perpetual idea of perfection. I have lived a life where I have seen and went through things and situations less than perfect. I have seen failure. I have failed miserably at seemingly easy stuff. I have topped my middle and high school for many year in continuation, I have dropped out of my first college after a semester, I have flunked in a course in the very first semester in my second attempt at college. I have risen from setbacks. I have seen setback, big life changing events. I have been the topper, the failure, the nobody, the center-stone of attention, the perfect child and the derisive teenager, the adventurous adult, the rebellious grown up, the responsible manager, the perfect businesswoman, the not so perfect student, the selcouth newcomer, the micawber of my family, the coruscating girl & girlfriend, the miserable prisoner of a titanic love, the recherché child of the universe. I understand perfection and chaos, better than most people. People around me can testify to this annoying little trait in me which follows order and avoids chaos at a sub-cellular level. After being in sitches and places that I’ve been in, all the vagaries I have acquired in the process, I feel wabi-sabi is my idea of perfection.
- Meraki: I believe in giving my heart and soul to everything I commit to. I firmly surmise that meraki is the way to go, in life. Going back to the crucial decision I had to make this weekend, after careful consideration and giving nauseating levels of thought into the matter, I decided to choose meraki. It is never easy to make these kind of life-changing decisions. I may end up sad and lonely in my old age, I may lose a consequential amount of time, I am risking everything I have come to be, and everything I can ever be, for the one thing I am deciding today. And yet, I feel utterly resolute to living my life and moving ahead, with meraki. Isn’t that just glorious?
Are there risks in this way of living? Sure. But isn’t there a risk in following a life of absolute certainty? I once read somewhere:
It’s the possibility of a dream come true that makes life interesting. — Paulo Coelho
My decision today is sisu. It’s nonchalant, without moral imperative or obligation. It’s my own and I decide to take it on with meraki. I will be proud of myself, even if I fail miserably and fall flat on my face again. I will be proud of the fact that I was able to choose meraki over fear of failure and my dreams over my doubts. It’s my decision, and it does not impel anyone else to agree to it, or to follow my lead. It’s an informed choice I made for myself. I believe, with this choice and my decision to give my heart and soul to my choice, without any expectation of requital, I am moving forward in life to the unexpected. Mr. Coelho would be especially proud of me today for heeding his advice:
You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. — Paulo Coelho
So am I perfect? No. Moving towards perfection? I don’t know. Hanging in there? Probably. It’s about seeing beauty in not so perfect little moments that constitute our lives and going about them doing our best. There is definite perfection in the approach, the process and the experience. I continue with my quest for ultimate perfection in life as I go about living it with wabi-sabi and meraki, expecting the unexpected, and loving it all.
