Perfection

 I feel like I've blogged about this before so if I have, forgive me. I am no longer a beach person. I enjoy different aspects of the beach, but the "sand in your toes, saltwater in your hair" feeling is not my thing anymore. One thing I thoroughly enjoy, however, is scouring the beach for seashells. Last weekend Rob and I went to the beach to celebrate (early) our 15th anniversary.  We had a couple kid-free days there, which we enjoyed. During our 48 hours alone we went to the beach once and that was only for a few minutes. However, once the boys arrived, we more than made up for the time on the beach. E taught himself how to skimboard and P, being a teenage boy, got the attention of a few girls (much to his delight). 

Me? I spent the time looking for shells. The boys know how much I like collecting seashells so they got in on the action as well. The thing is that when I look for shells I only collect the absolute perfect ones. If there is any type of flaw or the shell looks too ordinary I toss it back. The boys will collect any shell that grabs their attention and get excited about adding it to my collection. 

While walking on the beach I reflected on this. It's much like how I view life. I am a perfectionist...to a fault. I put a lot of undue pressure on myself to do everything as perfectly as possible. Unfortunately, I push those expectations onto others in my life as well....my family, my students, people I come across on a daily basis. And I get frustrated when my expectations are not met. But the boys still see the good in others and not their imperfections. Yes, they will make comments about people or things they observe. But, they don't expect perfection from people. 

I need to learn a lesson from them and from the seashells. There's beauty in every shell and every person. Sometimes we have to look a little harder to see the good, but it's still there. Not everything has to be perfect to be enjoyed. If the service is a little slow at a restaurant that just means we have more time to visit or enjoy the relaxation. If a student doesn't do a perfect job on their test then I hope they learned from their mistakes. If I don't complete a task perfectly the first time I have the chance to fix it or start over. I need to start looking at things from a different perspective because life is too short to stress about imperfections. Just like the seashells, everything in life has its own beauty and its own style of some sort of perfection.