What life needs is not perfection, but love.
Not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly!
Previous Story: Invisibility Cloak
“When you forgive someone,” Isha was trying to placate Rosh, “they stop occupying space in your mind. Forgiving completely is the highest form of revenge you can take on someone.”
“You have neither forgiven nor forgotten,” Rosh responded, “if you are still thinking of taking revenge. ‘Dig two graves before you embark on a journey of revenge,’ Confucius had said.”
“So, you are not annoyed with me anymore?” asked Isha.
“I didn’t say that!” Rosh grumbled.
“The first to apologize is the bravest, you know,” she touched him lightly. “The first to forgive is the strongest. And the first to forget is the happiest."
“So,” growled Rosh. “You want me to be brave, strong, and happy?”
Isha nodded.
“By apologizing, forgiving and forgetting?” he asked her again.
She nodded more vigorously.
“So you can go on being a nuisance,” flared Rosh. “No! I did nothing for which I should apologize. And right now, I’m in no forgiving mood.”
“The heart reacts,” she tried again, “but the head responds. Forgiving is the highest form of response. Respond! Don’t just react. You’re better than that.”
He did not respond, but he was listening. She was encouraged.
“Forgive!” she asserted. “Do yourself a favor. Delink yourself from those who’ve wronged you and from all the reaction – revenge feelings they stimulate in you.”
“It’s not that hard to do. It’s just in your point of view. You can say that cheese is made when milk gets spoilt, and to make butter, yogurt gets spoilt. You can look at what got spoilt. You can focus on the imperfection. That is one way of looking at things.”
“Or you can see that everything in the universe is moving from one level of perfection to another. Milk is perfect, and when it turns into yogurt, yogurt is perfect.”
“You take out cream from yogurt, and that is perfect, and then you make butter, and that is also perfect. That is another way of looking at it.”
“There must be something perfect between us. Because if there wasn’t, we wouldn’t still be together. Yet, it's easier to see only the imperfect…”
“Our BMW is perfect, but its handle doesn’t work. We focus only on the broken handle. Our life is perfect, but we’ve just lost our wallet. We focus only on what we lost.”
“But it is imperfection that gives value to perfection. It is the imperfect which makes the perfect, perfect! We need the imperfect, so we continue to recognize and value that - which is not imperfect.”
“There is so much perfect around us, if we only care to see it. If we begin to see it, we can begin to move from one level of perfection to another level of perfection..."
“Sounds perfect,” Rosh retorted, “until you look closely. Perfection itself is a mirage - invented by the mind because mind loves perfection. Mind craves for the flawless. But it is just an illusion, like infinity or zero! Concepts created to understand degrees of the finite.”
“Who has seen infinity? Who has experienced perfection? We are surrounded by degrees of imperfection. What life needs is not perfection, but love, understanding and acceptance.”
“We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly! Something you don’t do…”
“I’m imperfect,” Isha smiled sweetly. “But you are wise. Please try and see me perfectly…”
He knew when he was defeated, but he wasn't ready to confess it so quickly.
“No,” he answered poker-faced. “You'll just abuse my empathy again. I just want to get in the line now.”
“Get in the line?” she was puzzled.
"A man once saw a big crowd on the street,” he explained. "A very unusual funeral procession."
"One black hearse followed by another, about 50 feet behind the first one. Behind the second black hearse, a solitary man walking a dog on a leash. Behind him, a short distance away, were a few hundred men - walking single file."
"He couldn't contain his curiosity."
"Respectfully, he approached the man walking the dog and said, 'I am so sorry for your loss, and this may be a bad time to disturb you, but I've never seen a funeral like this. Whose funeral is it'?"
"My wife's."
"What happened to her?"
"She yelled at me, and my dog attacked and killed her."
"But who is in the second hearse?" the man inquired further.
"My mother-in-law," the man answered. "She was trying to help my wife, when the dog turned on her too."
A deep knowing silence briefly bonded the two men.
"Wow!" said the suddenly inspired man. "Can I borrow your dog?"
"Get in the line!" the man replied.
Next Story: Auf Wiedersehen. Good Bye!