Flaws
Dreams, death and perfectionists
wabi-sabi (noun)-a Japanese aesthetic concept that finds beauty and serenity in objects, landscapes, designs, etc., that are simple, imperfect, and impermanent
Palpating, I get up. These dreams have been pestering me forever. I try to sit, successfully calming my abnormal breaths. Something feels wrong. The dream, a mere figment of my imagination has got me questioning things I would not even begin to comprehend. I was a bird-watcher in one, watching the gruesome yet intriguing sight of it being killed. However in this dream, and for me in it, the scene was perfect; the boulevard of trees rustled, cherishing in the wind, as the early morning Sun recast the tiny drops of dew into a carpet of diamonds and filled the atmosphere which could have only been golden light. I could almost hear the sound of a waterfall nearby, blessing my ears with magic as I stood at the end of a mussily made path-my idea of perfection. I don’t know if the kill was quick; the splurge of blood says otherwise. I know it’s gone; the life has drained while the feathers bless themselves against the ground as the soil embraces it. It makes me realize that it’s not always the gift of life, but sometimes slavery is born to serve the sole purpose of being in service to someone else. As the crimson shade embroiders the ground, I realize how fascinating nature is; a medieval mix of goth and beauty. I walk towards the bird, ignoring the crackling of leaves under my foot marvelling at the mystery of life and death until my eyes reach the victim of life. Just as I was about to sit down, my eyes caught something on the far end. A drop of black. An imperfection. A flaw.
‘Why couldn’t this be perfect?’ I ask myself.
This question bothers me more than I let on, and as I prepare myself to lie down, the comfort of the bed, which was there just over a minute back, has disappeared. It seems hard, almost like it was unwilling for me to sleep until I dwell on this further. These swirl of thoughts currently make no sense and are rather disorganized to an extent beyond my room. The sleep doesn’t come easy. I fight myself, tossing and turning, trying to escape my thoughts despite a part of me wanting to spend the night thinking.
Over the next few days, I don’t question this much further. I don’t trust myself enough with this question. I address some pointers but nothing seems substantial enough for me to link together. I didn’t want it to be based on a single thought, I wanted it to be conclusive, something everybody could relate to and like most ideas, I got it in the shower whilst singing a song.
The issue I was facing while trying to network what I had thought was the inability to have a strong foundation. To put it into perspective, try to imagine having the bricks to build but no ground to build it on. What I tried to do here was start from the basics and try to understand what God(s) represented and how he/she was perfect. What I concluded was that the ability to make correct decisions was one of the primary factors of being God. In most cases, as humans, to provide correct answers we need to have the information to do so. So, this means that God must have the basis for everything to think about it correctly. This further leads to why no one will ever question God. He(or she) knows everything.
A human does not possess that virtue. Being a human means making a mistake. We all live by that peacefully, scared of what it is to play God because you can’t be wrong as God. Once you are wrong, you are disregarded as a God, human or anything worth paying a speck of attention to. From this, I concluded that I believe humans are the safe space between everything and nothing, thus matching the description perfectly. Being wrong means possessing a flaw. What does a flaw represent in us? For me, it makes you vulnerable in a good way. Vulnerability allows trust to be enabled between individuals because you can be questioned, or judged. These questions add layers to who we are and what we mean as a community as a whole. Flaw is a representation of who we are, our personality and what it means to us.
The world is covered in self-proclaimed ‘perfectionists’. I’m not disgusted by having flaws or making mistakes. Sometimes, it is the things I treasure. It allows us to believe, to dream and have hope. It gives us the mind that we are not perfect, pushing us to achieve that state.
Three weeks later, I get the same dream. The black dot is still there, but it isn’t the bird that is killed.
I hear it chirping as I look at the blue sky feeling the ground underneath.