What if Imperfection is having it all?

“What If,” ain’t that the question that keeps hovering over our lives every single second we breathe? What if I had pursued a different major? What if there’s no tomorrow? What if I said something that I should have said but never had the courage to do so? The phrase in itself is like a shadow that never leaves you behind. Our very instinct to keep asking this question reflects on something insanely critical about who we are: We are people who are always thinking about what our life could have been or if I try to put it out there more specifically, who we could have been in that alternate lives that we keep hallucinating about in our heads when we are sitting in a classroom, making dinner, hanging out with friends, or boarding the metro. 

Now that we have established the eternal thought that keeps chasing us everywhere we go, let's try and steer away from this question and talk about Plato: Yes the ancient Greek Philosopher we all keep hearing about every now and then had an immensely interesting theory about love and soulmates which he talked about in Symposium. Well, he seemed to believe that there used to be a time when humans had two faces, four arms, and four legs. In simpler words, humans who were “soulmates” were one single entity in their corporeal form until Zeus cursed split these entities and two and cursed them to spend the rest of their lives searching for their other half. 

Ever since I stumbled across this theory, I cannot help but wonder about the scenario that what if Zeus didn’t curse those people to search for their other halves but rather he cursed them to  keep searching for something which lied within them all along and what if our soulmate isn’t even a person; its merely an energy, an energy that lies right within us buried somewhere deep and we never bothered to look within because we have been busy searching for the other half that we lost ages ago. Now, I am aware that it's nothing but a wild stab at fiction that I took but there’s a part of me which sees myself every single day trying to find my other half and it's not really a person, it's the very desire of trying to have it all. 

I look at these people who apparently seem to have it all: They wake up at 5 AM, spare time to keep a gratitude journal, workout, have a skincare regime, meditate, go to work flaunting their perfect bodies, running a successful venture or working for one, having an impeccable personal life, and not crying themselves to sleep and all I feel is the desire to have what they do, the desire to have it all, to not experience the pain of missing out on anything, to not experience the guilt of eating a tub of chocolate chip ice cream sitting in bed watching Netflix past midnight, to not experience another mental breakdown, to not feel like I am a total failure. But when I think about who I am without these emotions and experiences, I am absolutely nothing, I would just be a young woman who has it all without having nothing at all. And I am beyond elated for the people who have the perfect routines and beautiful lives because it might be the energy that lied within them, it was their other half but maybe it's not mine; maybe my other half is this imperfectly perfect life which has days where I don’t feel like writing my journal and days when I don’t want to get out of bed and I would be giving up on savoring these experiences if I would just keep chasing the notion of having it all. Maybe some of you who might be reading this article also have it all in your version of imperfectly perfect lives but you are busy looking for something else, you are busy looking for something which has been there with you all along. 

How about thinking about this in another “What If?” sessions that go on between you and your mind?