Imperfection

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.  ~Ben Okri~

I have been in a quiet phase.  Hence, the quiet here.  I've found, more and more, that I am learning to trust the words of my own heart again, and that has been a valuable thing for me -- a healing and calming thing.  

Imperfection has been a recurring theme in these last weeks.  I have found myself contemplating an interior declaration that "nothing is perfect."  That understanding would have been tinged with bitterness even as much as a few months ago, but now I find that it feels good to simply know it and say it and be with it.  "Nothing is perfect."

Nothing and no one.  No relationship.  No place.  No time.  No event.  No object.  No story.  No thought.  No belief.  Perfection is this IDEA that we put out there without any specific definition or description or delimiting of any sort.  

So.  I am not perfect.  I am good, but not perfect.  I am flawed.  I am weak.  I am stubborn.  I am insecure.  I am needy.  I am demanding.  I am controlling.  None of those potentially negative truths make me "bad," although I have so often slapped that label on myself when all of that "dark" stuff boils up inside of me. I have desperately wanted, for as long as I can remember, wanted to find some place, of someone that would make it acceptable and safe to be me the way I am.  That longing lies at the heart of the story that is my life.

Not surprisingly, I have never managed to construct a perfect relationship.  My own perfectly broken places turn out to be great yawning chasms when I "fall in love."  I burden those I love with all of my powerful needing, and the weight of that inevitably drags us down into the darkness.  And, oh -- I am wretchedly, ragingly, blindly angry when I find that The Other has their own broken, empty, dark, sorrowing places too.  

Because, no one else is perfect either.  Cannot be.  Ever.  Expecting that of another human person is just wrong, and so terribly unfair.  

Life is a story that we write from the moment we are thrust, bloody, into this world.  Whatever path we are given to walk, there will be moments of shining glory, wrapped in days, and weeks, and sometimes many many years of misery, ignorance, and damnable, craven bitterness.  And, in the end, we will exit just as we arrived... all alone with only what we have learned to carry us on to the next reality.  

I have dreamed, like a child, of a perfect life; a perfect love; some sort of perfect wisdom.  I have been foolish and vain and arrogant.  I'm not more than any other animal on this little speck of cosmic wonderment.  Knowing that there is nothing perfect, frees me.  I can let that go -- at least when I am aware and calm.  

Going forward with the knowledge of my own limits, means I can go forward, and I am so ready to go forward.  Knowing that nothing is perfect, I can step off my high horse.  I hope that, with my feet of clay planted firmly on the ground of the real world I inhabit, I will finally meet those other perfectly broken ones who might, at last, make me safe and secure and home.  And that would be so perfect.