“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has” – Epictetus

Like many others, I have the same question for you all… What kind of life do you dream of? People ask it as if they have a basket full of lives and they are just going to give us the one we may ask for… But on a serious note whenever asked, our mind gets filled with words like peaceful, happy, successful, prosperous…. In nutshell, I can say we all want a PERFECT LIFE.

Now the question is what it takes to have one… What is the perfect life? And how do we make one? What will it feel like? To know that first, we need to know what this perfect life looks like? Maybe it will be something where we can achieve all that we dream of, where we have fame, respect and mostly where we have control. For some, it could be where they are in power, where there is no struggle, where they have all the money they can think of… maybe what we call a bed of roses.

My concern is it really that difficult to achieve what we desire? Is it only a fantasy? Another castle in the air.  Trust me it’s not. The only hindrance is that goals are ours, life is ours, but the scale on which we measure its success, it’s achievements are often borrowed from others. We often dream with our eyes, plan to achieve it with our mind, work with our bones and muscles, but turn a blind eye to the results. We often ignore the standards that we have set for ourselves and take up others as a benchmark. That is the cause of our misery. These thoughts always take me back to my childhood.  I remember as a child when I decided to learn alphabets. My mother told me that there are 26 and she will teach me to write 1 every day. I was very happy and excited by the fact that in less than a month’s time I will be able to write them all. On one fine day, I was able to learn two of them and obviously as any other kid overwhelmed by the big achievement, I ran happily to a neighbor to boast about my then so unbelievable achievement. I happily told her how much I have learned and her reaction to it left me disheartened. She mockingly said, ‘only two in the whole day? You will take a lot of time to learn them all… ‘this statement left a feeling of failure and inferiority in me. The fact which should have made me happy rather left me disappointed. But why? I have achieved more than I was supposed to, actually, I achieved double than the set goal. Still, I was unhappy. Because I suddenly changed my goal of self-development into that of earning pride from everyone.  I ignored my goal and judged myself from the perspective of someone else.

“ It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default”  – J.K. Rowling

The path to a perfect life is simple and easy. Eliminate the effect of others from your life. You can’t impress everyone in life. You just have to choose what makes you happy without hurting others. Just make peace with the expectations without devaluing your worth. Keep doing what pushes you closer to your destination and once you reach, the journey wouldn’t count. Keep your eyes open to the world but ears to your own mind and soul. If you have ever listened to any conversation of other’s success, you will know they only talk about the struggles, the hardships, and the obstacle that one has faced. Obviously it is to motivate others to fight the ones in their lives and keep going but it doesn’t mean that your journey should look the same.

Moreover, if perfection is to be seen as having the best of everything, that’s just a sweet delusion. We cannot have 100% of life but we can have what and how much we want completely. If perfection means to be right always, then how will you experiment to make new opportunities? If perfection is to always win than how will you learn lessons taught by failures? Life will be 100 % only when you embrace both sides of the coin. Good along with bad, positive hand in hand with negative, success with struggle only than your journey will be truly successful and complete, only then you will be showing the world what they have never seen before… only then you will be unforgettable, exemplary, and content.

However carefully you may plan the life, everything in the future will remain uncertain except one; REGRET. Which is the most painful and inevitable feeling. Life is in the moment we are living now

“The canvas of my life won’t be painted in black & white of success and failure… I simply don’t want to reach the dead-end called PERFECT,

I want to enjoy the bright glossy shades of experiments, the taints of adventure, and what people may call the stains of failures. My life will be a story, not just a lesson.” – Arsh Dhesi