Perspective ... on Perspective

It all starts with a college student in his late teens, in a kitchen in New Jersey. Frustrated, tears welling up, wanting to understand "it."  What's "it" all about?  How does one figure "it" out?  And looking at the person across the table from him, a longtime family friend, and asking her "why can't I be more like YOU?  You have IT all figured out."

And the person across the table ... almost 42 years old, who (the college student doesn't realize) is watching her marriage end, who misses her good friend dearly (my mom, who had passed away only a year before), who is raising a pre-teen among all this clamor, who feels the strain of holding it all together ... bursts out laughing.  Hys-TER-ically.  Just at the disconnect in perspectives.  And at the fact that this young man has put "it" all up on such a pedestal.

The laugh still resonates for me.  It's there for me, sometimes comforting, sometimes embarrassing, as I occasionally twist and turn and wonder about life.  Actually, it usually makes me smile, because the family friend is still a family friend, and if any good were to come out of my mother not being around anymore it's the development of that relationship.  Which has only strengthened and become worth its weight in gold over time.

But that quest for "it," for perfection, continues, sometimes stronger, sometimes completely unabated, sometimes tempered, sometimes like an animal in a cage waiting to get out.  And sometimes in remission, maybe denoting my increasing belief in my oft-repeated glib statement that life's imperfection IS its perfection.

And "it" continues ... across years and miles and spaces and faces.  And the emphasis on perfection never fully goes away.  But it does get better.  And it does make more sense, despite every so often, another reminder of the unattainable ideal.  And another minor crisis.  And another resolution.  And so it goes.

In some ways, this is the story of my personal growth, and maybe the reason for blogging.  I see other people, I see other sites, I see the things I think I want to be.  I see the things that make me say, "Ah, that's what I SHOULD have done."  But I don't always see the things I already am.  And I don't always realize that I can't fast-forward to the end, that going through the process is necessary.  And not really perfect at all.  Yet at the very same time, perfect in its own way.

So as I now sit on the other side of the (then-) age of that old family friend, who's always laughing in my mind, and I start to see myself on the other side of that kitchen table in New Jersey, maybe it's time to give some thanks to imperfection.  And to that family friend, who's as perfect as anyone in my life.