Humans Have to Live with a Sense of Imperfection

Sometimes we think that our eyes are too big, our jaw line too low, our noses too small, or our hair is too curly to comb. But those things we consider imperfect are what makes us, 'us'. Usually only we complain about such small details that we see as huge flaws, and not other people who directly look at us in everyday life.

We also sometimes think that we always fail in finding love, or we our cooking tastes just a tad too salty, or our paintings couldn't capture the mood we aim to encapsulate. We are too quick in concluding our failure as flaws. Driven by the thought that there are people out there that do the same things, but with better outcomes, we fall into desperation.

As the insecure beings we are, we sometimes over think about such small problems and create large ones inside our heads instead. These fears of being imperfect would slowly become larger and larger, and we would never be brave in the face of it. When we lose to it, we lose ourselves. Slowly our grip on reality loosens and we start to question. 'Why?'.

If, unlike me, you've never felt a strong feeling of desperation because of sleepless nights filled with over thinking and long empty stares at the ceiling, then congratulations. You've not lost your self to the pressure of perfection, of meeting your own expectations of yourselves. If you have, do know that the source of that desperation is you.

All the wants of being spotless, perfect, and without flaw, they all come from inside of you. The concept of an improved reality developed inside of your mind. And I don't blame you for that.

At the start of humanity, early humans had to have an ambition to have a shelter from rain or a will to hunt to survive. We needed to imagine good scenarios to have the will to bring it into reality. That imagination of good outcomes were both good and necessary.

But  the thing is our world right now is in fact far different than their world around them, and we face far more complex problems than they ever did, but our minds and theirs are not that different. We still do conjure up scenarios with good outcomes, but what we conjure up are more of a satisfying thought than a necessary element of survival. We often think of things working out well, for example in pursuing love, but without the awareness of our capabilities. As we fail to realize what we thought of, we also start to become frustrated. Our ancestors were frustrated because it would mean the chances of them surviving would become smaller, but we are frustrated because of our failure to achieve something satisfying.

Knowing ourselves would greatly relieve ourselves from such improbable thoughts. By taking a step back from reality and reflecting on our life, we would discover an awareness of the self. And when we are aware of who and what we are, we start to see the extent of our capabilities. We could then start to realize what we could and could not do, at least for now. The future holds many more things, as we grow and improve as humans.

Going back to the feeling of imperfection, I feel that we do need to realize one thing. We humans are not perfect, and never will be. But understanding what we could do, and what we could not (for the time being), would greatly benefit us. It saves us from the pain of depression because we think we're failures, and at the same time strengthens our concepts of reality. By being aware of who we are, we are less likely to fall into a false sense of consciousness of what we could and couldn't achieve. Finally, making peace with imperfection would make us realize one thing: we are only human, we have our boundaries, and we could learn to overcome them.

Created by: Aldo Muhes