The beauty of the imperfect
Have you ever asked yourself, what do you find beautiful? With time and experience, my sense of what’s beautiful has changed drastically. It’s interesting to see how much our notion of beauty is influenced by what others think is beautiful.
We rarely let our real feeling of beauty come through. Fear of not belonging, of being rejected from the group prevents us from enjoying what we, deep down, find beautiful.
I also felt I enjoyed beauty in things people didn’t even register.
When I was growing up, I always had a powerful sense of beauty. I had a clear idea of what I liked and didn’t like. With time, I started rationalizing such feelings. I started understanding what elements made it beautiful for me.
It felt strange. I did share the notion of beauty with many others, but I also felt I enjoyed beauty in things people didn’t even register.
This sense evolved with time. The more I studied, the more mindful I became, the clearer the pattern. One day it hit me. It wasn’t the perfect forms what I found beautiful. I did, but I realized, it was the tiny imperfections of those forms what truly made it beautiful to me.
All things in nature strive for perfection, but none of them achieve it.
I started enjoying the tiniest things. The wind on my face. The smell of flowers in Spring. The sound of the rain. I started going beyond physical perfection and started feeling an attraction to the nature of things.
All things in nature strive for perfection, but none of them achieve it. And that’s what makes them beautiful. It’s not the rounded lines, the proportions, the colors. It’s that straight line when there should be a rounded one. It’s that crack where it should be smooth. It’s that faded spot where there should be a solid color.
But maybe, what I find beautiful is the true nature of things. It’s their real intention, their fallibility, and ephemeral nature. Those imperfections that make them unique. Those cracks and quirks that make them special.
He looked at her naked body laying next to him. Her body glistened and reflected the morning light. Swallow shadows played joyfully between her breasts.
He kissed her.
She stirred lazily and turned around. Her eyes wide open and smiling warmly. She tugged at the blanket and covered her body.
He smiled inwardly. It felt such a casual move, but he knew the reason. It was amusing to see how differently they saw the same reality.
For her, her body wasn’t perfect. She felt a certain shyness around her exposed skin.
For him, it was pure beauty. Each curve, each line was just the way it should. The scars, the marks, the dimples. It all told a story about who she was.
She was beautiful; he knew this. The moment those dark blue pools settled on you, you could feel your soul fleeing, being drained into her infinite eyes. There was no escape, no option but to let go and get lost in her.
But, that wasn’t the reason. That wasn’t the beauty he saw in her.
It was her shyness, her quirks that made her so more beautiful. It was that moment of expectation; it was that look of thoughtfulness, that emotional crack that let show her fears.He could feel all her vulnerability, all her emotions laying naked, like a cloak around her skin. It was kissing that body, inch by inch, stirring those feelings, that made her real.
But maybe, just maybe, what he found beautiful was the true nature of that moment. Why and how they had made it there. How two souls entwined and got attracted by their imperfections.
It wasn’t their charm or handsomeness that had brought them together. Their fears and failings, as imperfect as they made them, were the reason why their souls found each other.
He smiled back at her, pulled the blanket off her body and touched her skin. It pulsed and vibrated, the transient fear peeling away as the sheet hit the floor.
What was dark, turned to light, what was wrong, become right. What was imperfect, became perfect.
We keep chasing ideals. Phantoms that only exist in our head. Life is in constant flow, evolving, changing. The idea of perfection is rooted on a static determinism, which is unnatural. That’s not what life is about.
But it’s in its nature, in the fugitive soul of the river that we should seek beauty.
Life is a river, which flows, never stopping. It’s provisional, fugacious. There is beauty in the sound, the drops, the currents. But it’s in its nature, in the fugitive soul of the river that we should seek beauty.
Physical beauty is just a state of matter, one that will pass. Like an aimless vagabond, substance will wonder, from village to village, from state to state. It will be liquid, solid, dust and air. It will escape our feeble attempts to capture it.
Next time you seek perfection, ask yourself what are you chasing? Are you looking for something pretty or are you trying to feel the precise nature of things?
Enjoy the quirks, the cracks, the singularity of things. Feel the imperfections, because those characteristics are what make us unique and worth loving.
