Imperfect

I stare at the wall in front of me, and as I stare at it, it becomes something wondrous to behold. It is a wall made out of cement and steel, painted white, and it is beautiful.

A beautiful wall? Preposterous, isn't it? Yet that is the thought that runs through my mind. It is beautiful because it is imperfect. There are chinks in it, depressions here and there, imperfections, crevices, bumps and protrusions. But as I run my finger over it, and feel its texture, its touch, it feels beautiful indeed.

Do you notice how much of our notion of beauty is based on sight? And how shallow that definition of beauty is? The wall before me certainly may not be much to look at, but it feels beautiful to my touch. Silence is the absence of sound, and definitely nothing to look at, but if you close your eyes and concentrate, the sound of silence can be more beautiful than the greatest works of Mozart. And the beauty of an emotion! Ecstatic joy, loving kindness, moving sadness, even numbing grief. Beauty in its purest and most unadulterated form.

But I digress. Looking at the wall in front of me, I realize that much beauty lies in imperfection. I look at a picture, and I see that it is the out-of-place, the quirky, that endears a picture to me. I listen to music, and it is the clashing of two sounds, the harmonious dissonance, that replays itself over and over again in the music of my mind. I take a bite of some peppermint ice-cream, and the clash of mintyness and sweetness clings to my tongue. I get to know a person, and I realize that it is the imperfections, the character flaws, the divergences from the norm that make them so beautifully different. Flaws are as underrated as beauty is overrated.

It is the flawed coin that is prized. It is the splash of colour on an otherwise perfectly white canvas that we esteem so highly, the bright stars in an otherwise perfectly black sky that so overwhelms us with their beauty. A new blade of grass, ruining the perfect snow. A tear falling softly on an otherwise perfect cheek. The howl of a wolf ruining the perfectly quiet night.

Ah, imperfect beauties. The world needs more of those.