Your Perfect Imperfect Self

Hi there,

As you are reading this, I would love you to have a mirror standing in-front of you and then you view yourself and see who you really are. I don’t know about you but growing up, I had so much confidence inside of me and I would attribute that to the kind of father I had. he made me believe that I could be anything good that I want to be and he made me believe in “hard-work pays.” And so with that confidence, I really felt that I could do anything and I could be the best in my secondary school. Of course it was a good thing but there was a point in my life when I could not balance it. I started channeling everything to one answer, “It just has to be this and that or nothing,” I enjoyed hearing my own voice among my teens then. Sounds strange right? I know.

As a teenage girl, I felt that I was better than most of my classmates maybe because I was always having the highest averages and getting praises from every teachers. I was loved by all teachers. Of course every teacher wants a brilliant student because that makes their work easier. Most of my classmates then, always borrowed my notes and some come to me to explain some topics to them during break periods. This really made me think that I was better and perfect. Looking back now, I think that it was a wrong way to reason. That I was top of the class does not make me better than anyone rather It made me better than my formal self. Many of my classmates then were good at sports and I wasn’t. Many were good at craft and I wasn’t. Up till now, I can’t even plait a hairstyle. Thinking that I was better than everyone else made me have a narrowed mindset. It is either this or nothing.

Having viewed yourself in the mirror, what do you really see? You know as human beings, we should be willing and able to learn and unlearn somethings if we really want to keep becoming better persons each day. I need you to know that you should not compete to be better than your peers, rather you should compete with yourself to be better than who you were yesterday. Your perfect self could make you loose lots of relationships or valuable friendships because you want them to take you as you are but you forgot that humans keep evolving in order to be better. Well, don’t get me wrong, there are things that we must not change for anyone like values and believes that shape us. If having children is one of the things you want in life and then you meet someone that does not want to have children, you have every right to end things and find someone that wants children as you. If you believe in going to church to serve God and you meet someone that wants you to stop going to church in order to be with him/her, you should not stay there, rather find someone that accepts your values. Another scenario, if you always leave the utensils dirty after cooking and someone tells you to try to wash them after you, you should learn to wash them for peace to reign. There is nothing like this is how I am, you need to adjust. If you were raised in a home were men don’t cook and you meet someone that expects you to help out in the kitchen, you would have to adjust. If you were raised to think that only men should provide for the family and you meet someone that expects you to contribute in the home finances, you should adjust.

If you are someone that only likes hearing your own voice in your life and around you, you need to adjust. Sometimes, something that will take you years to learn on your own will only take you a day to learn if you just humble yourself and ask questions or listen to someone.

Maybe you are so perfect that you want people to do exactly what you say or do but you have forgotten that there are so many means of transportation; there are so many ways of making money; there are so many techniques people use to study and understand; and there are so many ways people make their marriages work. If there are so many ways different persons do things, what makes you think that everyone must follow your foot steps or do as you say? Maybe you like packing your clothes in the wardrobe and someone prefers packing his in a bag does not make you better. Maybe you study for 4 hours and someone else studies for 2 hours does not make you better. So while practising perfectionism, do not look down on others in the process. Life really is a journey and we all have different purposes and different routes to actualise our goals.

Let me disappoint you a little, sometimes being perfect will make you bite your own flesh and you will keep on being irritated for nothing. I was playing tennis ball with a guy when I went for a picnic two years ago, he served the ball quite different from what I knew, so I told him that he served the ball wrongly and I kept on talking about it through out the game each time he served. Through out the game, I was really irritated cos he was doing it wrongly in my opinion. On a second thought, if I spoke about it once and just removed my mind from how wrong I felt he served the ball, I would have enjoyed the game a lot better.

What other example can you give pertaining to how we can be perfectly imperfect? Please write your answer in the comment section.

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