Be Perfectly Imperfect

CHAPTER 1

THE COURAGE TO FAIL

Failure is known as the stepping-stone to success. It is considered the prerequisite to success that is ‘truly deserving’. Somehow, unless you have passed through the fires of hardship, drama, and retribution, the taste of success is just not sweet, triumphant, or enduring enough.

Tales abound of world-conquering heroes who reached the zenith of their efforts after years of excruciating toil. Bards have sung of men and women who beat impossible odds to reach their destinations and of princes who battled fire-breathing dragons to free their beloved. If the brave German prince had not rescued his beloved Rapunzel from the wicked witch before he married her, we would not have heard of their story as a famous fairy tale. Would we have known Alexander the Great as a wildly successful king if he had not possessed valor on the battlefield as a testimony to his greatness?

From the tender years of our childhood, we are conditioned to believe that failure, misery, pain, and aggression influence the quality of the success that follows us. Even the definition of what constitutes success is hammered into us, and any separation from this predictable, socially conforming life plan is considered deviant. Success is considered such a demanding event that one needs to possess what it takes to achieve this elusive lady.

But does not true courage lie with those who dare to step off the road most taken, with those for whom the uncertainty of the unknown is a constant companion, and failure is an easily accepted best buddy with whom they can laugh at themselves? Is success not multidimensional, an amorphous zone that can mean radically different things to different people who come from different walks of life? To an educated young adult, achieving glory, adulation, and financial prowess may count as success. To a Sri Lankan fisherman, returning shoreward every sundown with a trawler full of prawns is victory. And to a child, taking the first toddling steps without falling is success.

Accepting life as it happens, focusing on the present moment, and following our heart into the valley of unknown experiences constitutes true success. Knowing that we need to do what we truly desire—that we must be equally dispassionate toward the crown of approbation that society deigns to grace us with and to the brickbat of failure it judges us to deserve—is courage.

The courage to fail, get up, and try again—within this resides the story of success.

CHAPTER 2

BE PERFECTLY IMPERFECT

MESS UP, GOOF UP SOMETIMES

This spherical wonder called Earth is slightly lopsided. Its magnetic core is a little wonky, yet it has worked perfectly since millions of years, supporting the incredible complexities of Life within its leafy embrace. Just like Mother Earth, become gloriously askew—just a little off balance. Because perfection breeds predictability. And worse, perfection is the weapon of the smug, the complacent. Where there is complacency and a self-perception of perfection, the doors to learning and experimentation slam shut forever. There is nothing left to learn—or do differently. There is nothing at which you can get better anymore. Have you met those people who build their kingdoms of power at the workplace? And those who are tyrants at home? The people who, when they approach, make their coworkers duck in vain under their desks to avoid them, and whose children scurry to their rooms when the dreaded doorbell rings. Those are the people who are permanent eclipses over interesting conversations, sucking away sunbeams with the straws of negativity—and at the arrival of whom, others sidle surreptitiously toward the nearest exit.

Be the person who can wear a pink sock and a green sock all at the same time in their hurry to go out and greet Life. Be the one whom people trust enough to bring their troubles to, with whom they can be assured of a dependable and non-judgmental shoulder to lean on. Be the person who can pay attention to the humblest intern and can bend down and listen to the smallest child—because it is from the unlikeliest directions that the breeze of revolutionary ideas blows.

Thomas Alva Edison—the Wizard of Menlo Park—never thought himself to be perfect. If he had, he would have smugly sat on the haunches of his 1 percent inspiration, never attempting the 99 percent perspiration that led to radical inventions such as the motion-picture camera and light-bulb, which were quantum leaps forward in the quality of human life.

Similarly, the Renaissance genius, Leonardo da Vinci, constantly competed with himself, revving up the engines of excellence with masterstrokes of creativity and scientific work; he was a painter, sculptor, mathematician, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, cartographer, anatomist, botanist, and writer. If he had ever thought, Perfect, I have painted the Mona Lisa, then that is all we might have known him for.

And sometimes the biggest blunders can transform into wonders. John and Will Kellogg accidentally left a pot of boiled grain on the stove for several days, and the result was a thick and crunchy mixture that evolved into breakfast cereal. While looking for a wonder drug to kill bacteria, Sir Alexander Fleming messed up by allowing a contaminated petri dish to grow moldy, and so penicillin, that powerful antibiotic, was born. Granted, not all goof-ups will lead to flashes of brilliance, but at least the potential is rampant.

Strive a little toward imperfection. I, for one, am very good at messing up. I commit mistakes so that I develop the experience and maturity to correct them and so that I do not judge others from my self-constructed pedestal of perfection. I seek the imperfect so that I can live a little imperfectly and love imperfect people—so that I take nothing at face value and find out every truth for myself. I plan never to be perfect at anything, so that I can hold myself up to my own standards and not worry about measuring up to those that have been set up for me. I plan to embrace imperfection wholeheartedly, so that I continue learning new things up to the last moment of my life, seeking the unpredictable, and being the tiniest bit uncomfortable—because there is no worse legacy to leave this world with than being called a perfect bore.

CHAPTER 3

THE ART OF LETTING GO

UN-CLING, DISENGAGE, RELEASE

There is a difference between good-bye and letting go. Good-bye is ‘I’ll see you again when I am ready to hold your hand and when you are ready to hold mine.’ Letting go is ‘I’ll miss your hand. I realize it is not mine to hold, and I will never hold it again.’

—Unknown author

We are all gardeners. Whether accomplished ones or not, we unfailingly tend to the gardens of our life, hoping that the trees and shrubs within will always be laden with fruit and blossoms, to shower the petals of happiness on our upturned faces. Sometimes we prune and shear and water our plants—yet, they start to wilt frowningly, an unrelenting canker eating into their essence. We water and nurture the leaves and flowers more desperately, hoping that all will be well by itself. But with each passing day, a cold grayness steals over the tree in our garden, and one day it is gone. The accomplished gardeners among us run our experienced eye over the ailing plant and immediately fertilize the roots, letting go of those circumstances and relationships that are poisonous weeds creeping up unsuspectingly, climbing and twirling surreptitiously, choking the life force from our tree of life. Afterward the tree thrives once more, its blossoms and fat fruit swaying gently in the wind.

The art of letting go is liberation from the shackles of self-imposed limitations that bind us every second, till those final moments when some of us realize the futility of all that we considered super-critical throughout our lives. But it is too late by then. There is no rewind button to press and instantly remove the unwanted villains