The Myth Behind the Perfect Imperfection.

A week or so ago, while on a group trip to Duluth, one of my good friends and I spent a good portion of our night arguing about the word that is "perfect," and it's existence in our society today.

According to Dictionary.com, the word perfect is defined as being:

Perfectper·fect

[adj., n. pur-fikt; v. per-fekt] –adjective

1. conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type: a perfect sphere; a perfect gentleman.

I personally don't believe it has a place, that there is no such thing.

But I suppose like any other word in the English language, it could heavily depend on the context in which it is used.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times my parents have made it exceptionally clear to me just how imperfect my decisions and actions can be.  Whose hasn't?

More than once during high school a paper was handed back to me with an "A" written under my name on the front page of the document I had handed in. 

An "A" on a paper is considered a "perfect" score.

But is that in itself even a realistic judgment?

I handed that paper in to one teacher and one teacher alone.  I bet you, that if I had taken that same exact paper to four or five other teachers, at least one of them wouldn't have liked it as much.  Eventually one of them would have told me to change something about my writing to make it better fit their own personal taste.

So the word "perfect" is, in itself, truly an imperfect thing. 

An unrealistic adjective created by people to describe something that meets their own personal satisfaction. 

What tastes like a steak cooked to "perfection" to one person may be grossly over-done to another.  We as people have such different tastes in anything and everything, in ways of seeing and thinking about things, that the word "perfect" can't possibly exist as being the same thing in the eyes of every person.

Yet it is used as a universal adjective, and always has been seen as a word that anyone can use to describe anything they please. So the next time someone complains about your cooking, don't take it too deeply to heart, they probably wouldn't have made anything you would've wanted to eat anyways.

The next time you get an "imperfect" grade on that paper you spent hours the night before critiquing to perfection, go get a second opinion from a different professor before you go breaking your keyboard in half.

Better yet... remind your parents the next time you get scolded for doing something they don't approve of, that realistically there is no way you can meet their expectations of being a perfect child, so you've simply given-up trying.

They can still ground you, and scold you, and hell; they'll probably do both.

But you'll have the sweet satisfaction in the back of your mind knowing that you are technically the only one that made a realistic point during the entire argument.

It's a universal, perfect excuse for any and every occasion.

Thank you, Mr. Webster.

Running from Memories- Everything Happens for a Reason.

"Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become
comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason."

Every day that I walk into work, I learn something different about life.

I work at a truck stop on the outskirts of a small town, stuck between cornfields and one long stretch of highway.

I remember my first day there.  I was almost late because I wasn’t familiar with the area (so I thought), and I couldn’t find the gas station.  Turns out I had passed it twice without noticing it. 

My mind contains certain memories like stamps on an envelope.  I remember what the letter was about, but the stamp is the distinct moment about that day that doesn’t seem to make any sense to me until a good deal down the road.

Over a year ago, we were trying to find our friend’s graduation party, but we had passed it because I was complaining about churches being so huge and extravagant.  He was driving and trying to listen to me talk, so neither of us noticed the massive climbing wall on the other side of the road that had been put up by military sergeants at the party.

We drove down the road a little bit more and once we got to the top of the hill; I distinctly remember two things happening.

1)   1) Him saying we needed to turn the jeep around because we were in the wrong place we must have already passed it.

2)   2) Seeing a gas station at the bottom of the hill.

Like a time stamp on my memory I remember thinking that it was an odd place to put a ginormous gas station.  We whipped a U-ey and found the party on the way back at a park we had passed on the opposite side of the road as the church I’d been criticizing earlier.

            There were open, walk-in interviews for my job now, about five months ago.

I walked into the store and filled out an application on a whim.  I was hired three days later and they told me the name of the store I would be positioned at (you don’t have a choice, you go where the company sends or needs you) I walked in just in time on my first day, and met my new boss and some of my new co-workers.   I spent my first day watching training videos. 

My second day I hid in the back and scrubbed the floors. 

And my third day, I finally got to train on my register.

A week or so into my job, I was looking out the window, watching the pumps, and noticed that the street in front of the station turned into a steep, winding hill a little ways up the road. 

My stomach went numb. 

All of a sudden I flashed back, and in my mind I saw a view from the top of that hill, a about a year ago sitting in the passengers side of his jeep, looking at a curiously placed gas station. 

I wanted to quit my job. 

You have to understand at the time, he and I had separated not long before, and I was doing all I could to start over and forget everything that had happened. 

Days later I learned seven miles up the highway was his hometown. 

About a month after that, I was invited to go to the bowling alley on the other side of the trees in our lot and realized it was the bowling alley where he and I had had our first date. 

I started freaking out, doing the best I could to ignore the fact that I was surrounded by things and moments I was trying to forget.

A couple of weeks ago, a boy that I am seeing now visited me at work and asked me what way I was taking home.  I told him I took the highway home, because I was scared to take the hill… “There are no lights.” I didn't tell him my real reasons... but he egged me on for weeks to take that way home, because it would be faster.  And every time I would get to the turn out of the parking lot after my shift, I would stop and think about it, but couldn't make myself turn my wheel right. 

In reality, I just didn’t want to look in my review mirror at the top and flashback.  And I didn’t want to see the park where my friend’s party had been, where we had spent all day and most of the night, until we had to rush home.

Then about a week before thanksgiving, I gutted-up and decided to try that way home.
And I did look in my rear-view mirror to see the station behind me at the top of the hill,
and I did pass the park where the party had been and remembered everything that’d happened that day. 

But now, I take that way home every time I work.  And it isn't really even that much faster.

Because I’ve learned, from the people that I work with, that it is not a bad thing to remember, it is a bad thing to remember and not learn.

Every single person at my work has bad things going on in their lives.  

For one woman, it is a constant, never ending guessing game of chancing her heart being broken once again, because she has faith in the man that has hurt her before to change his ways.

For another girl, she is too young, pretty, and fun to be the most negative girl I’ve ever met. Her boyfriend is a solid support system in her life and I myself can tell he wants nothing more than to always be there for her.

There is a man that is newly married, and already I can tell his marriage is struggling and on the verge of possibly being very unhappy.

There is another girl who settles for less than she deserves, impatient on finding the one that will treat her right.

Listening to all their stories, their pasts and experiences, I’ve been able to, as horrible as it sounds, feel much better about the events in my own life.  There is always someone out there that has had things worse than yourself happen to them, by listening to their stories and observing their attitudes you can learn how not to act, how not to see life, or what not to do. 

Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason. 

Memories are not meant to harm you but meant to teach you and lead you somewhere else, to take you back and make you learn what it was that went wrong, so you can avoid it and help other’s avoid similar situations in the future.  If you cannot become comfortable and accepting of your past, there is no way to move on into the present with the ability and mind set to accept anything and everything that is in store to come. 

Posture- What You Say Without Actually Saying Anything

You can tell a lot about a person’s self image as they walk down the hall past you.  Look at how they hold themselves, how they walk and how fast, where their eyes go when you get close.

Do they hunch their shoulders and stare at the floor?  Do they clutch their books to their chest and increase their pace as people pass them.  Do they veer as far to the other side of the hall as far as they can go without falling through an open door.

I was walking down the Medical hall to my next class and a boy in a sweater vest nearly ran into a trophy case.  Not even three minutes later a girl clutched her books to her coat and watched her feet steep one in front of the other.  

My first thought was I hadn’t put on any deodorant, or I’d forgotten to shower.  Maybe I’d wiped my nose and smeared snot all across my face. 

None of those seemed likely.

This got me thinking.  Why do people have lack of self-confidence in the first place?  

I mean if you think about it realistically… None of us look the same.  So what’s the point in worrying about it? 

No one person looks alike, so why do we whine and complain about everything that’s wrong with us when A) we can’t do anything about it and B) we can’t physically make ourselves all look the same, so no matter what “flaws” you have, you will always in one way or another look and act differently than someone else.

I bet you if you asked someone to come up with ten things they hate about themselves it would take them thirty seconds to point at everything they hate on their body.  If you asked them to tell you ten good things about themselves, they’d veer away from physical aspects and list off their talents or abilities instead.

Why can’t people look someone straight in the eye and say hey what’s up? This is how I decided to dress this morning and if you don’t like it, well, quite frankly my dear, I just don’t give a damn. 

I used to be vain about my looks.  I used to spend hours and hours on my hair, make-up, outfits...  I’d stand in front of the mirror with magazines in front of me, trying to get myself as close to the girl in the picture as I could get.   What was the point of that?  I was never going to look exactly like her. We  didn’t look the same naturally much less with ten gallons of eyes shadow weighing down our lids.

So stand-up straight, walk comfortably in your own shoes.  Meet people’s eyes and avoid injury from unexpected open doorways or glass cases.  Because you look stupid when you walk as if your afraid of yourself.  If you don’t have a problem with you, no one else will either.  You might as well respect and see the beauty in your own features and personality.  If you don’t like you… how can you expect anyone else too?

Just a thought.