A Matter for Reflection #1

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
Salvador Dali

Now, if somebody had just told me that, a lifetime ago, things might have been very different.

Perhaps I would not have quit art school three months before graduation. Perhaps I would have stayed on, working part time at the bingo-hall in the evenings. Perhaps I would have continued running like mad to get on the last streetcar for the night. Fancy I stayed on, painting and doing far deeper damage than a few kisses to the Bingo-boss' sweet, shy, seventeen year-old.

But I believed in perfection. I had visions of it. Perfection is shiny and hard. It has nothing to hide and no mysteries. I was not afraid of perfection, but to find out that I did not have what it takes to reach for it.

I never got my hands on Salvador Dali's memoirs. I never saw the quote. I led my life, making grand gestures over petty things, and absolutely nothing about the few things that really mattered for many, many years.

Eventually, I realized that perfection is of no interest to me, and I so I was finally free to fail.

That is when, for the first time, I found perfection within reach.

And then I found the quote.