Perfection is a desired state for anyone, but is it a necessity From my own personal behavior I feel sometimes I waste too much energy on being perfect, which may not be necessary. A little flaw here and there is ok. Social media keeps bombarding us with images of perfection and these days you do not even know what is AI generated and what is real and when we look at it, it makes us feel like we are not good enough. When we see perfect images on social media it makes us feel inferior. A person on social media with a perfect figure, a perfect house, sometimes their families may also look perfect to us. But behind the scenes what's happening we never know.
Last month while I was in India, at a social gathering I met one lady, she has been into extreme fitness regime since the last 2 years and her body looks perfect, and at that time I had a little belly coming out. She passed a comment on me saying, oh look you are having a bloated belly. At first I felt very bad and felt very conscious also. It's not that I am not in to fitness, but right now I am going through my menopause phase and no matter how much ever I am trying little belly is still there.
For few days I kept worrying about it, but then I thought. Why am I getting so paranoid about it. That girl is in her 30s and I am in my 50s we both have different environments and conditions. In my 30s I was also that way, so it's ok for me to accept my current environment and myself in whatever I am. I am not unhealthy, nor am I overweight, so why am I stressing out myself so much. This was just on one front of life. As such there are so many other things in life where perfection is not important.
Perfection can also be boring sometimes. As humans we are vulnerable and have our own weaknesses. We learn and grow. No one knows everything from birth, we keep pushing ourselves to keep opening to new experiences and learning and learning never stops. The moment we start believing that we are perfect then possibly the learning will also stop.
In work or in self or in general life, the most successful people have also failed but they did not let their imperfection define them. Their failure was used as a stepping stone to grow, learn and become who they are. So it's ok to be out of shape, messy, and a little quirky. Most important is to be yourself. With all of that again it is not like perfection is never required. There are somethings in which perfection is important and one must not let that pass.