I haven’t written in a while. Not here…not in my book. Not at all really. Until this past weekend. As I had mentioned, I was having some “page fright”. To say it more honestly, I was afraid the words wouldn’t be good enough…or that there would be too many of them. I was afraid people wouldn’t get them, or that I wouldn’t communicate what I was trying to say “funny” enough…or emotional enough…or non-emotional enough. Honestly, I was afraid that they wouldn’t be “Perfect” enough.
One word that I would consistently use to describe me throughout my life has been “Perfectionist”. As I live in a city that has perhaps been seen more often as a perfect 3D rendering than a real-life city, I draw a strong line of parallel between myself and this city of Dubai that I live in. This city strives for perfection at every turn. It’s never-ending thirst for growth and expansion is something that I understand. It’s desire to be the best, the biggest, the tallest, the most perfect is something that resonates deep within my personality.
However, in living here…I see something of Dubai that is quite different. As I drove around yesterday cursing the construction that aides the endless development of this fast-growing, but slow-to-learn city, I saw beyond the scaffolding something familiar. I saw Myself.
This city is somewhat of a metaphor for my own life. I have rendered my life to perfection in my mind. It’s shiny and soft around the edges. The sunlight is beaming from a perfectly silver-lined cloud onto the building of me that is the tallest and brightest in the world. The air surrounding me is clear and peaceful. Birds are flying around at the top of my beautiful exterior. The buildings surrounding me look like bright white land angels…sitting at my feet, listening to the brilliant stories that I tell. Of course, there is music…and nothing else to hear. The streets are clean and lined with greenery as bright as anything you have ever seen. The flowers are blooming…the beach is clear blue and people everywhere are happy and at peace. Everything is perfect here in the 3D rendered life that lives in my imagination.
However, in my “real life”, there is a dingy dust-filled background filled only of noise and debris….and scaffolding that reaches tall into the air, covering that shiny building that is yet to be finished. The sky isn’t blue. In fact, there is hardly any color to the sky at all as the sandstorm that frequently takes over the city has blown trash and left-over remnants of wood and cloth into the street and sky, leaving it to have little-to-no color at all. The buildings surrounding me are not stark-white, but have a layer of sand on them, as do all of the cars. Nothing looks clean. The streets are littered with spittle and trash and dirty water. The air is not clear, but smells of unbathed peoples from all over the world. There is no music, only the sounds of sanding and sawing and hammering and honking and screeching and talking in languages that I cannot understand. Nothing is clear….and nothing is Perfect here in my “real-life” life.
Though, what I've found here in all of this...is Beauty. A beauty that is unique all on it's own. It's a beauty of Process. It's a beauty of growth. The beauty of constructing a new City, over and over, expanding it in every direction, pushing vertically and horizontally, and even on diagonal. It’s a beauty of change, and a beauty of Blossoming.
Perhaps Dubai will never be Perfect…..and for certain, neither will I. But I’m slowly learning to embrace the Beauty of Imperfection. I’m learning to accept the beauty of my own growth. I’m learning to accept that there are things that I can change and things that I cannot. I’m learning to accept the scaffolding that surrounds my ever-growing building, and I’m learning to like the noise of the construction that means work is endlessly being done. I’m learning to accept that nothing is perfect, nor will it ever be….least of all Me.
That’s not to say that I will give up. I think Dubai and I will continue our stretch at being the best that we can be….and hopefully we can both accept the Perfection that already exists beneath the noise, debris and scaffolding.
