The other day, as I was listening to that deep, rich,
sonorous and very unique voice of Hemantada singing those poignant lyrics
penned by Rajendra krishan— Zindagi Pyar
ki do char ghadi hoti hai —all of a sudden flashed in my mind what my
revered teacher once said: “Never ever leave a true relation for a few faults,
for no one is perfect, no one is always correct”. He also said, “What ultimately
matters most in our relations is ‘affection’”. Sounds pretty, isn’t it?
As the song is progressing slowly—Taaj ya takht ya daulat ho zamaane bhar ki / kaun si cheez mohabbat se
badi hoti hai?—asserting that these few short hours of loving mean much
more than a crown and all the riches in
the world— the whole course of discussions that I subsequently had with friends
over what my teacher said rolled before me ...
One evening, as I shared what my teacher said to my friends,
one among them, questioning, ‘What is perfection?” quoted Mark Twain, saying
that the very meaning of ‘perfection’ is continuously getting perfected all the
time. In other words, what he, perhaps, meant to say is: There is nothing like
‘the’ perfection, for it is always evolving.
Going even farther, another friend questioned, “why
perfection at all?” for, in his view, perfection is always accompanied by
undesirables. “For instance, beautiful rose is accompanied by thorns”, says he.
Even otherwise, he goes on arguing: perfection is after all defined by us, the
human beings. So, what is perfect today could become imperfect tomorrow; what
is acceptable at one place may turn out to be a taboo at another place.
Indeed he hates perfection! For, he feels that in the
pursuit of perfection—a state of completeness, flawlessness, or supreme
excellence—one gets deprived of even simple pleasures of life—could not enjoy
even whatever accomplishments that one’s limited resources/abilities enabled one
to pocket.
He also argues that it is always easy to relate with a man
of slight imperfection rather than with an altogether perfect man, for he would
always be a kind of intimidating lot—particularly to the lesser mortals. Then
he enquired, if I have ever seen a mountain range. He says there is no harmony
among them—some are high while some are not; yet the mountain ranges look
beautiful, aren’t they? He therefore asserts that it is the same with many of
us, the imperfect beings: we trip here, stumble there and yet get one or two
things done right here and there in our long journey through the mist of the
life… and that is the marvellous imperfection of us, the beautiful beings…
Remember, we are not the angels… we are after all human
beings trying to get our bearings alright to lead meaningful life here on this
planet unredeemed … So, let us not condemn ourselves, if we here and there
bruise our integrity or trip over our values… for, we are after all ordinary
mortals with our own inherent imperfections…
But that doesn’t mean, you be with it! No, do get up and try bettering it… That is
the meaning of ‘living’. All living things are eternally imperfect for there is
always room for bettering the existing perfection… it’s only inanimate objects like
a table or a chair that once made cannot be bettered! In other words, it’s perfectly alright to be
imperfect, so long there is a desire to improve… and happiness rests in not how
perfectly we did a job but doing something better—better than previously.
There is another interesting question that my friend raised:
If everyone is perfect where the love would go? Intriguingly, he goes on to say
that it is our imperfections and the resulting differences which make us to
search for that missing half so that we can become full. And that missing half is
nothing but the ‘love’ which appears in the form of ‘forgiveness’—the act of excusing
imperfections.
This obviously raises a question: What is love? Being awake,
being alive to what is happening right now… makes one more vibrant, and in that
vibrancy one loses all solidity… rigidity … one becomes more fluid. And
therefore nothing sticks … concepts and theories won’t stick and so openness
pops up. In that openness one is no more in the know of what everything is… and
in it emerges freedom and this state of ‘freedom’ is love. In this love
everything becomes devotion. No matter whether it is perfect or imperfect,
anything done in devotion turns out to be alright.
Incidentally, children and animals, they say live in this
plane. They approach everything with no pre-set ideas. They see the things
simply as they are in front of them without colouring them with concepts and
labels. They see the world around them thus not because they are more
enlightened. It simply happens—happens
because, they might be looking at it in their natural meditation!! Indeed,
such simple seeing happens for us, the adults, too but the problem is: the all-pervading
idea of ‘me’ as somebody different separates our seeing from that of the children
and animals i.e. our beliefs obscure the reality. And hence the perfection and
imperfection.
So, don’t get bogged down by concepts, labels, beliefs,
etc., for they are the imaginary constructs of the conventions that the society
has bred and they are, unfortunately, powerful-enough to even obscure the
reality from mind. So, learn to simply
look at the happenings around in a total freedom. And when we do what we do sans expectations—expectations
as to how things should be, without colouring them with idealism and blame, but
with more openness and compassion—any kind of outcome thereof would become alright.
In such an approach imperfections even lose their sting.
That freedom—the freedom which enables one to see the
asymmetry, the mess, the unresolved … the imperfect, the terrible as they appear all around in their true
colours—never lets one sacrifice the loved one merely because he or she is
imperfect. And, remember: Zindagi
Pyar ki do char ghadi hoti hai …
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