Seeing Perfection

Professor Martin Lowe twists and turns as the train spiral out of control heading towards him. Pain and fear yanked him out of his subconscious, and he woke up bathing in sweat, breathing heavily—an image of Xena, one of his students. And April, his on and off girlfriend, stand together, glaring at him. He blinked, then wiped his eyes to remove their mirage while grabbing a deep breath. Feeling for the lamp’s light switch to his left, he switched on the light. His eyes swept the room as his heartbeat slowed. He convinced himself that he was safe.

That dream has been repeating a lot lately.

“Unfinished business,” his sister warned when he shared his dreams with her.

Glancing at the LED-lit clock beside the lamp to his left, he nodded, flung the covers off, then quickly changed into dry clothes and went to his office. His computer was still on. “Damn,” he said out loud, remembering that he was marking midterm papers.

Xena’s paper was waiting for him on the screen as he switched on his laptop.

Xena Latham was a brilliant student, but her work was always imperfect. Grammar and spelling issues took away the plus from her achieving an A+.

“I am not perfect,” she would often say when he criticized her work. “And if you continue to seek perfection in every area of your life, you will keep losing something valuable.”

“But you could get better grades,” Professor Lowe suggested. ‘“You are a brilliant writer and student.”

“How can you tell?” she questioned.

“Because I can see and identify your deficiencies.”

“Focus on what I write and not on the mistakes I make. Then you will find the true me.”

Those words started the recurring dreams for the past six weeks. Something else seeped through his thoughts, “Your focus is always on the wrong things you said I do and say. You aren’t aware that they are a reaction to your actions,” April said the last time they fought. “You demand perfection from others, yet you are riddled with inadequacies that you can’t see or feel within your actions, choices, decisions, or your life. Even with the consequences, they bring. We weren’t created to be ideal. There are no lessons in perfection. Nothing grows from it either,” April berated in anger.

“I am sorry, but that’s what I aim for in life.”

“Then you will never be able to live a normal life. Our incompleteness helps in our growth and maturity. At the same time, teaching us how to live with all of what life gives. Life isn’t faultless, Martin,” she said. “Why do you expect I and others to be?”

That was a month ago. He hasn’t heard from her since.

He read Xena’s essay entitled: Humanity’s Need For Perfection, without prejudice. Shocked at the brilliance of what she wrote bound him to the seat. These words at the end grabbed his heart.

“Humans are both perfect and imperfect, and only genuine love will accept both without prejudice because real love is a perfect gift. Through love is the closest humans will ever come to achieving perfection.”

Many humans crave perfection, unable to see the imperfection within. They can see and identify it in others, but never themselves. What about you? Can you see your sins?

When you look at others and if all you can see are their faults. You aren’t looking with love.

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