perfect

In a perfect world, the weather man is always right.
Stickers always peel off clean.
Someone always has a pen.
People respond to texts immediately.
The pencil lead does not break off while you sharpen it.
The perforated page tears out clean every time.
The other sock never goes missing.
There is always milk for the cereal.
Markers do not bleed through the page.
The most wrinkled dollars are accepted by machines.
Bags of chips are all-the-way full.
All of the popcorn kernels pop.
Allergies do not exist.
The shoe will always come in your size.
The driver in front of you always remembers to signal.
Paper jams never happen.
AM and PM never get mixed up on the alarm clock.
There is always an available power outlet.
The battery is always full at the right time.
The omelette never breaks in the pan while you cook it.
That thing you want comes in your favorite color.
The chapstick never disappears.

But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a flawed environment. That doesn't mean life has to suck, we don't have to choose to see the flaws, we can have the opinion that the world is a beautiful place where beauty eternally flows.

I remember when I first got involved with 'seminar' in the third grade. It was a class set aside for the smart kids! I thought I was so cool. But back to the point, our teacher Mrs. Donnelly made it a class rule that whenever we weren't able to solve a logic problem or puzzle or riddle or question, we weren't allowed to say it was hard. Instead, we were only allowed to use the word challenging to express our academic frustrations. It was a social norm to give up easily and to complain a lot - I guess it currently is a social norm. But in seminar, failure was not an option. Back in those three years of taking that class, us little guys did huge research projects on countries and made documentaries about different architecture and created blueprints and conducted interviews and an endless amount of high level work. And we all did well, and it's because our teacher didn't let us give up. I was a rowdy child, but I learned focus and success through consistent positivity.

I think, in times like these, when the bad is bearing down on us, we should make it a rule that we're not allowed to say it's hard. Failure's not an option. We can cry a little, that's okay. But then we've got to stop. All we need to do is calm down, regroup, observe, and focus. And life's success will come.