Living Imperfectly: A New Year’s Reflection

As a new year begins,

the pull toward cleaner plans and clearer answers returns.

I feel it too, and I’m increasingly aware that progress

almost never unfolds that way.

What endures is not perfection, but repair; not certainty, but patience;

not flawless foresight, but the willingness to stay with it.

The baby babbles, wild, uncorrected,

Sound before sense, joy before order,

Learning by reaching and falling.

The postal carrier straightens a porch lamp;

Work done without witnesses.

A butterfly lifts on a torn wing,

Lands on a tilted cemetery stone,

Names faded. Still standing.

At the dinner table, chairs worn smooth by years,

Stories, mended or embellished, told again.

Cracks in the retelling let the light stay in.

In days past, I chose a hand and a house,

Armed with inspections, lists, and hopeful guesses,

Like books opened with missing pages.

Every big decision arrived incomplete -

Quirks, leaks, losses, unlisted annoyances

Unpacked themselves over time.

I chose anyway.

Learned the terms by living them.

Adjusted, patched, committed.

I bet on repair, not foresight.

Love can blossom, then fade, like a flower,

When tended for display, not endurance,

Unable to last like a heart-shaped stone

Warmed in a pocket,

Treasured, not paraded,

Weathering through time.

But in some houses, perfection rules,

Blind to the slow unfolding of what’s unknown.

Steady hands shovel snow into temporary order.

Snow returns, again and again.

Leaders count, plan, and decide

In polished offices and comfortable dens.

Numbers gleam, untouched by fingerprints,

Imagining flawless futures on paper.

Yet progress comes from hands that learned repair,

Foiled plans, forecasts crossed out,

Patience that bends instead of breaking.

Nations, too, crave the flawless line,

Borders drawn as if rivers obeyed,

As if time did not revise its claims.

They want the future spotless now:

No cracks, no detours, no slow mending,

Mistaking haste for wisdom, and calling it strength.

But even the brilliant gem

Sleeps for eons in layered dirt,

Enduring the long shaping of time.

Nothing stays pristine for long,

Porch lights, leadership, love, memories,

All quietly correcting.

Real life makes no claim to purity.

Growth feeds on error and decay.

So we live more like rust than chrome:

Shaped by contact, marked by use,

Still here, not perfect,

Enduring, because repair is what lasts.