PERFECTION

Our idea of perfection is not always the same as Gods.

Here's an analogy :) I bought my 18 month old a little wooden train set for her birthday a few months back. Once it was unwrapped and she'd finished playing with the wrapping paper and the cardboard box she curiously began to run one of the carriages along the carpet and up onto the chair.

"No honey, that's not where it goes, look, this is how works."

I beckoned her toward me while trying my best to fix the track into a "perfect" copy of the picture on the cover of the box. Ambitiously (I'm not particularly technical usually) I went to town building tunnels and bridges and aligning the houses, trees and signs along the perimeters all the way from the fireplace to the sofa! I coaxed the train from my little ones tight little fist in order to show her how it was "meant" to work. But instead of playing with it as I thought she should, she began pulling the track apart, piece by piece with a casual air of absolute glee until

a higgeldy-piggeldy pile of debris stretched all the way from the fireplace to the hallway!

With children, it seems, nothing works out the way it is planned. Nothing stays tidy for very long, or still. There is always movement and noise; laughter and tears.

... Life isn't about the superficial, picture perfect end result. It's about the messy joy in the middle.

The haze of wonderment in between the "so called" big events.

Joy is not about CAPITAL letters and FULLSTOPS. It is a descriptive sentence full of pauses, exclamations, questions and metaphors!

Often we compare the montage of our daily existence to a crisp, clean, synthetic version of a so called "perfect" life captured within a 30 second advertisement. Pictures flicked from the pages of a glossy magazine become an ideal worth attaining. But at what cost?

You can't open the petals of a bud, they unfurl gently and naturally of their own accord, and such is life. It can't be forced or rushed through. Everything has it's own time.

Equally, the details which seem so unimportant in the great scheme of things often turn out to be most precious jewels of all.

The gentle way my eldest carries her little sister into the garden to play, the patterns on the bark of a tree, the frayed edges of a leaf, the concentration on my little ones face as she trys to tie her shoelaces, silver cloud reflections trembling in muddy puddles, the smell of rain.

It's funny how the most unremarkable days so often contain the sweetest memories. The most beautiful moments almost always remain unrecorded, they evade capture. Maybe they are just to precious to be held constant.

Perfection isn't a still frame. It can't be composed. It's a moving image swirling with colour.