'Cos you're amazing

How dreary would life be if all of us were perfect little drones? I suspect it would be a flawless black and white world of precision and predictability. I don’t know anybody who would love that, perhaps except for a few fanatic German engineers.

It is for this reason that I believe that it is the quirks, those wonderfully unique eccentricities that make us colourful, attractive and ultimately lovable. The irony is, of course, that deep down I aspire to this boring perfection I publicly denounce. Why? Because society has subtly and very brusquely led us to believe that anything less than “perfect”, is not good enough.

Winners are lavished with praise. Runners up are losers. The beauty queen wears the crown. The rest are rejected. The smartest kid gets the A. The others have to worry about their future.We are bombarded relentlessly with the idea that we are ashamedly flawed, any time we don’t look like a cover girl, don’t earn like a rock star, and don’t cook like Jamie Oliver.

Then the unexpected happens. Society throws a spanner in the well-oiled works of zero-defect. It retraces it steps and promotes flawed self-acceptance in an attempt to compensate for the damage it caused by endorsing unobtainable ideals of perfection. Now I am confused. Must I be myself or must I be “perfect”? I can’t be both. 

So, I decide to look up the definition of perfection, just to make sure I know what exactly it is I am trying to attain. According to the Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current English, it means:  Complete, with everything you need.

Reading this I realise something I know, but constantly forget. I was BORN complete, with everything I need to enjoy this one miraculous life. It dawns on me that taking first place gets you a medal, but last place means you are in the race the longest.

Although it boosts the ego to win a medal, diploma, crown or title, they are only indicators of temporary achievement. They do not determine abstract concepts like perfection.

True perfection happens at the moment of birth, when life gives one of its countless breaths through the lungs of a little baby. Even if that baby’s body and mind are different than that of others, it is still complete, still has everything it needs.

All that is necessary is to remind that baby throughout her life of this one simple truth. She is perfect just the way she is.