I have always wondered if beauty lies in perfection or otherwise ? I have seen that the truth may lie somewhere in between. I live in a home today which is built by a builder whose architects play around with the beauty in the imperfections of nature.

On the other hand, I used to live in a flat where the architects believed that beauty lies in perfection. In that flat everything will be perfect to the core and almost like a mirror image of each other.

While I admired both the houses and the builders, I always wondered whether beauty lies in perfection or imperfection ? This may be true in life too. I have always been a reasonably organised person in my personal and professional life.

All my things at home will be in its place and all things will have a place in my home. Similarly my office space will be reasonably organised so that you can retrieve anything in reasonable time.

I have met people in my life who aim for perfection as the means and the others who consider it an end. There are some who get highly disturbed even if a small pin is not kept in its rightful place. On the other hand, there are others who thrive in chaos.

Another good example could be our planning process. I love to travel to places. So, while I travel I plan reasonably well in advance, book my tickets, hotels etc. Even if I am travelling by car, I am clear on my route and the place where I plan to stay. However, it may be fun sometimes to tread on a journey where the destination or the route is unknown.

There are people who fear the unknown and there are others who fear the known. So the truth in life may lie in between the two extremes. A teacher who teaches you up to the last alphabet may do a good job but a teacher who enables you to explore the last alphabet may also kindle the curiosity in you.

I am not sure whether perfection adds to beauty or it destroys ? If we plan perfectly life is beautiful but imperfection makes life adventurous. So life is not black and white. It is grey most of the times. We need to learn to aim for perfection but should be willing to deal with imperfection and enjoy the journey instead of cribbing about it.

The beauty of the craft in the photo above may be in the imperfection more than the perfection.

If you buy a hand woven garment most manufacturers will tell you that no two garments will be similar. The hand craft of a weaver is reflected in the garment and hence each garment could be different but may be beautiful. On the other hand, machine made garments may all be perfect to design and no dissimilarities between two of them and this may make it boring.

So, we have to learn to live with imperfections to have a perfectly happy life.

S Ramesh Shankar

18th October 2019