Perfection is beautiful but illusory. It is our humanness, with all its guts and glory, that is a true representation of beauty
“When we are young, it’s the illusion of perfection that we fall in love with. As we age, it’s the humanness that we fall in love with.” J. Brown
The pull toward perfection is the young belief that to be exposed in an imperfect state is the epitome of shame. The younger self does not yet know that the glass cage of imperfection is still a cage, albeit a beautiful one. It prevents us from reaching out to others and keeps them from touching us. The arrogance of youth supposes that it takes courage and strength to maintain the impossible standard of perfection and that great adoration is due to those who achieve it.
With the wisdom of age comes the understanding that true beauty lies not in symmetry, but in the raw, ragged edges of exposure. In those contours are carved our stories of vulnerability, of struggle and overcoming, and also of battle and defeat. Each is branded with the unique mark of its owner, and no two are exactly the same.
What we begin to understand with time is that the pursuit of perfection is actually a lazy shortcut — the mold is created and it just needs to be filled. With humanness, each individual’s course must be charted on its own, with no blueprint to follow. Each one of us has to mine for the beauty within and expose what lays dormant inside us until we touch it. We begin to appreciate that owning up to our imperfection creates a glow much brighter than the illusory shine of faultlessness. Whereas perfection is two- dimensional, this light has depth, perception, and an intricate pattern,
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