The quest for perfection will always frustrate us on this side of Eternity.
Next Friday, the elementary school where I work, is having a book dress up day. It coincides with Dr. Seuss’s birthday. The different grade levels are picking book characters to dress up as and there will be a parade. Elementary schools still do some cool and fun activities because being a kiddo and learning is supposed to be fun.
Those of us older folks, who happen to work in the office, were encouraged to participate as well, which we of course, happily agreed to. Life is serious enough. We didn’t want to miss an opportunity to play along with the littles and who doesn’t love a parade?
After much discussion and combing Pinterest, we decided on 101 Dalmatians. It would be fairly easy to put together and we all knew the story well from our own childhood.
All I had to do was buy a plain white t-shirt and cover it in black spots. That’s a simple enough task. I got the shirt, put it in the washer and when it was dry, got ready to cover it in spots.
But, I had to decide whether to use a fabric marker or fabric paint. After several doodles on a different piece of fabric, I settled on the paint. Then I got started on the first spot. Was it too small? Was it a perfect circle? Where should the next spot go? Was it too close or too far away? Then there was the third. Was I making a weird pattern? Should they all be close to the same size?
After driving myself crazy for a little while, I picked up the book that I had since I was a kid, and was reminded that no two dalmatians look alike and that some had lots of spots and some had very few and the patterns were all over the place. Thank-you Walt Disney.
I knew this of course, but how had I forgotten? How had I allowed such a seemingly easy task, to cause me such unneeded stress?
I knew the answer: It’s the quest for perfection.
It’s a doomed quest that many of us needlessly saddle ourselves with, the perfect body, the perfect smile, the perfect hair, the perfect outfit, the perfect spouse, the perfect kids, the perfect job, the perfect church, the list is endless.
We sometimes forget that we are travelers here. Our permanent residence is in heaven where perfection lives because God is perfect, but on this side of Eternity, we are broken and nothing is perfect, although there are times when we will create all kinds of unneeded chaos trying to achieve it.
A dalmatian t-shirt reminded me that life here on planet earth is never perfect and trying to achieve perfection here will always wear us out. Sometimes I need reminding. Perhaps you do too!
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂