The Day I Stopped Waiting for Perfection

My entire life has been a quest for perfection.

I like perfection. Actually, let me correct myself. I need perfection.

Everything must be perfect.

A perfect example of my need for perfection has been my requisite for the perfect parking spot. And by perfect, I don’t just mean the closest parking spot. It must be close, perpendicular and I must be able to enter it from the left.

I do not do as well when I veer in from the right. It sometimes takes me too many maneuvers to be perfectly situated when infiltrating a spot from the right. I can’t have that. I need it to be perfect on the first try. Don’t even get me started on a parallel spot. I moved to the suburbs, in part, to escape the fallibility of parallel parking.

I’ve postponed engagements because the timing was not perfect. I once even canceled plans because my hair was not perfect. Well, in my defense, the humidity that day was through the roof.

There have been many occasions when I thought that my time might be better used for envisioning perfection, preparing for perfection and even perfecting perfection.

Then one day, while trying to squeeze into a very narrow and flawed parking spot, it occurred to me that perfection is an illusion. And the pursuit for perfection is just an excuse for inaction.

That is when I stopped chasing mirages and learned to appreciate life’s perfect imperfections.

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