.Octate.
BY @TEENDIARIES
All our lives we strive for perfection. Many people blame it on the perfectionist or an over ambitious mind, but me? I blame it on the very roots of our existence. You guessed it. I blame it on the elements which make up the world present in front of our eyes today. Sad part is, they also make up the person who you see in the mirror every day. So it is natural that this person adopted some of the elements’ characteristics. The main one being a place in the periodic table. Just kidding. The actual one is the element’s never ending need to be perfectly balanced and stable. 90% of the elements in the periodic table have negative or positive charges or ‘imperfections’ due to extra electrons in their valence shells. They are on a continuous search to find a way to remove these imperfections to become like the noble gases and achieve octet.
So what is the difference between us and theses tiny particles? There is one
and only one difference and it is that I am able to blame the biggest existential crisis of humanity on them and they can’t do much about it. We on the other hand, take this need to be perfect to a whole other level. Don’t understand how? Let me explain. A student gets 99% on a test. Now, people would naturally expect him to be on cloud line and in a very good mood. Instead his friends find him cursing himself for not getting 100/100 on the test and re-evaluating the paper about 10 times over. This frustration comes from believing the tiny voice in your head regretting making a silly mistake instead of listening to the other part which is playing IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE!!!! Inside your head.
It comes from hearing people say, ‘Just that one mark and you would have got 100’, and automatically this day gets a tag in his mind’s memory card as his biggest regret rather than a celebration of a fantastic score. He centered his focus on the one mark he lost so much that he forgot about the 99 marks that he did get. The word imperfect has been jammed into our brains as a synonym to faults and flaws that we almost forgot that it actually spells, ‘I’m
perfect’. When we see celebrities and models in magazines, our immediate
thought (me included), I wish I could look as (fill in the blank) as her/him.
Every moment we spend being upset about being imperfect and not achieving octet, we lose a moment of happiness that will never come back. Now, every time you look at magazines, always remember, you are strong, you are courageous, you are kind, you are beautiful just the way you are.
PS: If even 20% in the world believed that, there would be a happier planet. Of humans at least. (I can’t sense other organisms’ feelings)
About the Author
Teendiaries is a 15-year old student from Bangalore, India who enjoys writing.
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