I remember the first time I went to a UK shopping centre and had to buy vegetables. It was like walking into a cyber game. Everything was perfect – the strawberries were the right shade of red and shaped in just the right kind of cone. I could swear the speckled seeds on their ripe scarlet skins were placed at an exact distance from each other. The situation was the same with the tomatoes, the apples, the mangos – all their fresh produce looked…perfect. Of course I paid the exorbitant fee for my perfect fruit and took home a bag to cook my first meal. I was excited. If they looked THAT good, imagine how they would taste!

I chopped up the cucumber, making sure my pieces were exact (when dealing with perfect food you feel the need to not ruin the perfect pattern). I tossed everything into a salad bowl, added some dressing and sat down with my house mate to enjoy my salad.

Only, I didn’t enjoy my salad. The food was tasteless. It was as if whoever had grown it had focused so much on the perfect exterior that they had forgotten that good fruit or vegetables should taste good. I was severely disappointed.

When I was growing up there used to be an avocado tree in the garden of my Grandparent’s home. How long it had been there, I have no idea, at least as long as my Grandparents had live there. When I was little one of the most exciting things about my trips to my Grandparents was being able to wonder outside, my little hand snuggly fit into my Grandmother’s, to look at the avocado tree to check if there were any avocados. Most of the time the birds got to them, or alternatively they would fall to the ground and rot, but occasionally we would find one on the branches that was “just right.” Yes, it wasn’t perfect. There were nobbles or holes or the odd strange shape, but those avocados tasted like ice cream – creamy, rich and flavourful.

These two examples remind me something I think we often get wrong in life. We try too hard to be perfect.

Everywhere we look it feels like the world is trying to turn you into something perfect. When you pop online there are make up tutorials to give you the “perfect” skin. There is plastic surgery to give you the “perfect” nose. Social media feeds clog up your brain with images of “perfect” lives. We get ourselves all caught up in looking for the “perfect” job, the “perfect partner” and the “perfect” home.

We miss the real deal: the messy beauty God created us for. We’ve chosen the opaque tomato with no taste over the beautiful ruby-red globe huddled in the creeping climber of a garden. We’ve chosen the apple that lasts for 4 weeks on your fridge shelf over the apple clinging to the limbs of an old tree in a neighbour’s yard.

What if our lives weren’t created to be perfect? What if our lives were meant to be a long messy ensemble of failures and learnings, fallings and pick ups, lessons and embarrassment? What if we said “heck no” to perfect and started being real?

What if we told people about the things we messed up? What if instead of looking for someone “perfect” who matched the list in our head, we looked for someone who would be a good companion through life’s rough seasons? What if we loved people’s crooked noses or quirky ways? What if we saw old people as lovely because of the weight of life experience which they carry in their words? What if, instead of competing to prove we are perfect, we decided to work together? To be one big trying to figure it out, all together?

I think the world has got it wrong. I think that we are so used to “perfect”, that we’ve forgotten how good “real” tastes. Throw away your silly magazines. Delete the Instagram accounts that make you feel like you’ll never meet the mark. Go out side, take a walk, see your imperfect image in the water of a pond and remember God made you imperfect and its OK.