There is no hope!
One fine evening, a bored and irritated Ron was just scrolling through the Facebook feeds on his mobile phone. He was not reading or looking at any particular stories, updates, pictures, and videos posted by others attentively; sometimes he clicked the like button below a post without even bothering what was written on it. Suddenly a video posted by one of his old friends, caught his attention. In the video, his freind was playing a guitar and humming a popular movie song. For a few moments he was just fascinated by the guitar playing skill of his freind; but, slowly a feeling of envy crept into his mind. He sighed and looked at a corner of his room. There his own old guitar was lying just like a scraping— only one string of it was in right place, others were either missing or detached miserably. This reminded him of his unfulfilled desire of past again; his heart ached. He remembered his college days when he was so desperate to learn playing guitar. He would dream of playing it in the annual college fest where the best looking girls of the college sitting in the first row would be looking at him with their big dark dreamy eyes– keeping those pointed chins on their delicate palms. That never happened in his college life. His father was a strict disciplinarian and never liked the idea of doing anything outside study.
Whom to blame?
But, should he blame his father for his unfulfilled dreams? He doesn’t know. After he started earning, the first thing he did was– buying a guitar. For first few days, with great enthusiasm every evening he would play it till his fingers ached. Watching YouTube videos, and various online classes he acquired some skills in few days, at least he thought so. However, as the days passed by, one day he realized that the amateur guitarist in him had to walk miles to reach the guitarist of his dream. As soon as he felt that he was far away from being a perfectly skilled guitarist, his enthusiasm started to wane. He thought he started too late, and there was no way he could acquire the skill sets in a quick period. He could not fathom the state of his imperfection too long. Before he could realize that he was too impatient to be perfect, he had given up.
How to be perfect at something you do
We want to excel at something in life, don’t we? We want to acquire so many different skills, knowledge or wisdom of so many different things at some point of our lives, but for many of us it just doesn’t happen. When we got awestruck by the effortless performances of skillful people, deep down in our hearts too, a desire blossoms– can I also do that? At times, we genuinely motivate ourselves to pursue that desire, but, there are very few people who can reach that state of perfection.
When we embark on a journey of perfecting a skill, the most difficult aspect to deal with is the sense of insufficiency. When we compare with the masters or others we find out our imperfections, wantings. Apparently it is a good thing, as such awareness would keep us grounded. But, unfortunately, it may also hinder us from advancing in our journey.
Let’s take few scenarios:
1) I like to write, but I know I am not good enough; so, I hesitate to take up writing seriously.
2) I am a wannabe singer; but I know I am not good enough. It hinders me to sing in front of others.
3) I used to paint. I think I have some serious capabilities. But, when I showcased few of my paintings in public, many viewers including some talented artists found many flaws. Now, I doubt my own talent, and I am quite demotivated.
In such scenarios, it is quite hard to motivate ourselves to pursue our passions. We generally give up midway not being able to tolerate our own shortcomings. We fail to drag ourselves to the finishing line, and with a heavy heart, we just add another unfulfilled dream in our bucket list of life.
Carry on
At times we do have some unrealistic, over the top daydreams, which are never going to materialize in our lives considering our present conditions. But, when we have some serious potentials, and still we could not make anything out of it in our lives, that definitely will haunt us for rest of our lives. Like renowned and revered visionary and spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says,—
In your life if you don’t do what you can’t do is not a problem, but, if you don’t do what you can do, then you are a disaster.
Surely, we don’t want to be a disaster in life. In the last day of our lives keeping our hands on heart we would like to say we did our best to fulfill our potentials; we did everything we could do to be perfect at our desired ventures. But, overcoming the barriers of negativity in the journey to perfection is not an easy task. However, to reach there we must carry on walking– one step at a time with our imperfections.
The shortest route to perfection
To be precise the concept of perfection is relative. What someone may consider epitome of a something (a skill, task etc.), for someone else that may be just a starting point or mediocrity only. In a nutshell no one is perfect, or not many of us are perfect at what we do. So, there’s no need to be disheartened. It’s a good thing if we want to make something in our lives perfect– a skill, a project, a relationship, some material dreams, or may be a spiritual aspiration. But, to motivate ourselves to carry on the journey towards perfection, we must remind ourselves that till we reach that state we have to deal with our imperfection at every single step. Comparison with others is not going to make any good for us, if it derails our progress only. We should not fear or resent our current imperfections. These are just stepping stones–few meta stable states before reaching the final one. So, let’s walk along with our imperfections, as in our journey to perfection we can’t evade it, and with each strong stride it would surely vanish like a drop of dew. Lastly, here is a beautiful quote for you to ponder over:
To accept ourselves as we are means to value our imperfections as much as our perfections.
Sandra Bierig
By Saralananda Prakash