Some people are known as perfectionists. The word means person who has an obsessively exaggerated tendency to achieve perfection in what they are doing.

Perform the best in whatever you do is an appreciated quality. However, when it is almost an obsession, it brings unhappiness to the person and those who live with him/her.

If it is someone with a managerial position, it will be quite complicated to achieve a work team that can meet his or her requirements.

In the domestic area, in its turn, it will be difficult to meet his or her expectations, because the clothes will never be impeccable as wanted, or the food with the exact taste, or the furniture with total absence of minimum dust.

The person ends up generating a halo of antipathy and grudge around him or her because, beforehand, everyone already knows that, as much as they strive, they will never achieve the degree of perfection that was idealized.

A story says that, in the 10th century, the young Rikyu wanted to learn the complicated ritual of tea ceremony and sought the great master Takeno Joo. In order to accept the young man, it was required to submit him to a test.

Then, the master asked him to sweep the garden. Rikyu  cleared the garden until there was not even one small leaf out of place.

When finished, he carefully examined each centimeter of the sand in the impeccable garden. Each stone was on its place and all the plants were perfectly arranged.

However, before presenting the result to the master, Rikyu shook the trunk of a cherry tree and made some flowers fall, carelessly, on the ground.

Master Joo, impressed, admitted the young man in his monastery. Rikyu became a great master of tea and, since then, he is revered as the one who understood the essence of the concept of Wabi Sabi: the art of imperfection.

To notice the beauty that lurks in the imperfections of the world is an art. The Persian rugs always boast a small mistake, a tiny defect, with the goal of reminding anyone who looks at them that only God is perfect.

This is the human condition, and the art of imperfection begins when we learn to recognize it and accept it.

The wisdom consists in knowing how to live in the world, in harmony with the world, respecting everything and everyone.

To realize the Divine Wisdom in the diversity of colors in the nature and in the skin of men.

That is the reason why, each creature is especially unique in terms of feelings and qualities. No one is like another, as in  nature, no leaf is exactly equal to another.

This speaks of the greatness of God. This invites us to be empathetic with the qualities of the ones who serve us, who live with us, who love us.

Appreciate the antics of an unquiet child, the slow and irregular walk of someone who has withstood many years and advances in the new century, of who has the agility of the wind, who brings the mind immersed in dreams.

Let us live, therefore, in the world, loving, serving and investing in our moral development.

And let us learn to look at people as being the flowers of the cherry tree which fell in a careless way, delicately embroidering the green lawn, with the certainty that they give  true beauty to this huge garden of God, called Earth.

Spiritist Moment Team, based on
research about Wabi Sabi, The art of
imperfection.
April 23.2014.