Why Your Life Will Never Be Perfect

I know this sounds like the title of some buzzfeed article, but trust me, it isn’t. I have laid off writing prose for sometime and was completely engrossed with poems, mostly because I was in that stage where I had to express something, which could only be done through poems. Doing it through prose would have been ugly. But I’m back with prose, though I’m not sure for how long.

So, if I do walk up to any person and ask if they are striving to reach the perfect life, they will say “No”! They will say, they are striving for something, but they are happy with what they have. But everyone is; that person is striving to have a perfect life, so am I and so are you. You want one day when everything will be in its place, when everything is all right with the world and you can put your legs up and say, all is perfect. You would want the perfect parents, the perfect home, the perfect job, the perfect car, the perfect spouse, perfect kids and so on. With each thing that you try to attain, you of course look for the best and what matches your idea of what it should be. And when you don’t get there, you feel you have settled for less and then there is some guilt and self-beating and feeling bad about it. Eventually you just accept it as it becomes a part of your life. Life takes over.

You always strive for the perfect life. But your life will never reach that stage, whoever you are, whatever you are doing.

There are 3 simple reasons why (again, not being a Buzzfeed article, but there are actually three reasons).

First, Perfection is only an abstract idea and more importantly, it is ‘Your’ idea of how things should be. It is not defined and it ever changing. For example, you thought in your teens that a Hayabusa was the perfect bike and later it changed to a Harley or Bullet or whatever. You thought your perfect dream home was in a bustling metropolis amid the richest of the rich, but later your idea of a perfect home was in the suburbs with the nearest neighbor being a mile away. It is constantly changing, because what you desire is also changing with changing circumstances.

Secondly, even if you get to the desired idea of perfection even before your idea of it changed; you will already be done with it and looking at the next thing. The most perfect example for our generation is the phone. Remember how excited you were before buying that new feature loaded, just exclusively launched new 89th version of some phone? How long did the love affair last? Just how many times did you use the new filter over and over again until your friends got tired of talking to your face with a phone in front of it? A few days, and in extreme nut-job cases, maybe a few months. Then after that, you are looking at something new, a new perfection. The aura fades away way too quickly. You were very excited the day you got married; you had found the perfect spouse. Then…. life took over isn’t it? Especially now, in this time that we live in, where things are moving at a very fast pace in the external world.

Third and last, the external world is never perfect; it has too many things going on for it to be perfect. You might or might not get what you desire. That is dependent on too many things. The external world is not tilted in your favor or someone else’s favor. When you don’t get what you desire, it is natural to blame God and tell that maybe you were out of favor with the person above, but life doesn’t do favorites. In the external world, there are too many things happening at once. Too many variables, and actions and consequences; all happening together at once. Our minds are incapable of handling the enormity of existence that is going on around us. Hence we use our own lens and call the world fair or unfair. But it simply is existing as it is. Nothing fair or unfair about it. And trying to handle all this complexity and trying to create perfection is akin to foolishness.

Just take your partner or spouse for example. Is he/she perfect? Maybe initially you thought so, but then time unraveled many aspects about that person that drove you to madness on some days. But some days also existed when that person was perfect for you. Whatever we get, or whomever we end up with, will never be according to how we want 100%. It will always be off by a lot. Even if you went and married god tomorrow, still the next day you would complain about god. They will have their own ways and mannerisms. Their own quirks and desires. They will also want you to be in a certain way, but are you? Are you the way they imagined? You will miss by a long way. But still, you hold on to them isn’t it? Because instinctively you know that being with them, just being with them, however they are, is perfection. By trying to change or control the outcomes or behaviors, most people create immense suffering for themselves.

The external world cannot be controlled, grasped, or perfected. It knows only to exist, and if we also learn to just exist with it, we would be such soulful and joyful beings. Does that mean perfection is not to be strived for? Not at all, we should strive for perfection. That is how we are made. But it is to be strived for with the inner world. Once you attain a certain level of perfection within yourself, you will handle the world much better. Whatsoever the outside world is, you are ok within yourself. The inner self is easier to perfect. Isn’t it? You have it in your hands. By trying to perfect the outer world, we are only driving the Earth to its grave. And ourselves along with her. If we all understood this, we would work on ourselves with more consciousness, but sigh, most of us wait for life to beat us down and when we are down, we wonder what went wrong and then take a step towards inner perfection. If you are intelligent enough to see this, then you will do it without having life beat you down before you realize it.

Otherwise, the race to external perfection will continue, and so will human misery.