My three granddaughters came to my home this past weekend for some "undivided attention time" with Gram, while my daughter and son-in-law celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. As always, we had a wonderful time together and I realized once again how relaxed and sweet life feels when I am with them.

We went swimming at the neighborhood pool, rode our bikes to the park, found some party surprises to celebrate their parents and just simply hung out! At one point, early in the weekend, I asked my oldest granddaughter, Shelby, a question that I knew would be provocative for her. I asked her what she thought the world might be like if we all sought to be "imperfect" instead of perfect.

"Wow," she exclaimed, "it would seem pretty weird!" She seemed to under- stand the question with considerable depth and I watched her mind debate itself as she allowed some thoughts around imperfection pass through. Then she suddenly became logical and critiqued those thoughts. But I kept gently pushing her to imagine an imperfect day that was intentional.

One of her first spontaneous responses was, "Well, we could stop thinking about what other people thought of what we said or did; and just do or say what we were really thinking or wanting to do." I found myself pondering this response for quite a long time. Actually, I am still pondering it. I found this response fascinating coming from one who is only nine years old.

How early our children learn what the expectations and demands of the external world are. And, consequently, how quickly they become discon- nected from their own internal expectations and needs. Yet, our own internal responses remain, like an ember, never really extinguished, but not really having the intensity of the flame which has become externally-oriented.

Shelby continued fantasizing an "imperfect" day and decided she would wear old clothes and wouldn’t care if they matched or looked okay. An imperfect day at school might begin with kids standing instead of sitting at their desks; reading and studying what interested them, instead of what they "had" to do. When I asked her what a school day would look like if the teacher sought or allowed imperfection, Shelby laughed out loud and said, "Cool, but the school day might be so confusing we might have to go home before the end of the day!"

Perfection is not attainable, yet many of us chase it as if it can be grasped and held onto. Many of us measure the success or failure of our day, our year, our lives, with the amount of movement we make toward perfection.

Seeking imperfection strikes me at first as an absurdity, and then as a delightful possibility. Why? Because instead of closing us down, it opens us up to our full potential, releases our fears and connects us to both our spontaneity and our humor. The journey toward perfection comes at a very high price. It may well cost us our self-awareness and our spontaneity. The more externally oriented we become, the more we tend to satisfy other’s expectations of us. As this occurs, we lose both awareness of and the energy necessary to meet our self-expectations. As we become attuned to the outer world and as we do, our inner world becomes more and more silent.

Finding balance between these two worlds, internal and external, perfection and imperfection, is the optimal choice we might offer ourselves and our children. I dare say that in seeking imperfection, we might just meet the most creative aspects of who we are. Creativity is the heart of inspiration. What an incredible gift this would be to give to ourselves and to the world!

Copyright © 2002 Elaine K. Williams. All rights reserved worldwide.

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