I've always wanted to decorate my walls. They're stained with white paint, and nothing more. Empty, plain, with enough space to fill it with masses of posters and art, and instead, all that there is to it is the dull and mundane slightly off-white colour.  Except, there's an imperfection near the bottom, a tiny dent, imprinted into the wall. At first, it was barely noticeable, just lying there in a corner, hidden and camouflaged in a background that looks exactly like itself, only there because of something that happened when we were first moving in, where the ladder in my room toppled over, hitting the wall at just the right angle, chipping a small fraction of paint off. Leaving just a small dent that would be overlooked in just a second. Unless you stopped and looked, the chances are you never would have noticed it until I pointed it out.

But when you’ve been sitting in the same room, facing the same wall, day after day, it’s no longer a dent. The little marking of a hiccup from ages ago, seemingly growing. Consuming the rest of the seemingly perfect wall, until the only thing that is present, is that fragmented piece, no longer there

 

Then, what would fill the empty space that sits alone?

 

To fill a gap is not so simple, if I chose to fill it with something, there would be an outlining border, sticking out like a sore thumb, a wound that would never heal. Whatever you decide to fill it with, whatever it is that you may have to fix it, there will always be a lining around it. 

 

Even then, if we try to cover the spot on the wall, that means we’d have to cover it in paint. I’d have to get the right colour, and be able to paint over it, as well as covering the seam until you can't tell it's there. But life is never that easy, is it? There's always a catch. What happens when we only paint one spot? Then, there's a mark of extra paint that covers only one spot. You can't cover and improve only one spot of the wall and just leave the rest. You have to paint over the whole wall. All of that effort to cover one spot in the wall, barely noticeable, and barely there. 

 

Then again, such a small spot is truly difficult to ignore. Even when it is barely present, it’s ever so frustrating, how difficult could it be for me to just fix it once and for all? All that effort might just pay off in the end. Maybe it would make a huge difference in the end, maybe it would just make the wall look so much better. To zoom in and look at the faint little indents, that are undeniably there, and think that you would need to make such a big change. 

 

And for what? Because it isn’t perfect? To be told at the very end of the process that no one would have noticed if you hadn’t tried to fix it. Is it worth it? By now, how much time have you sat here weighing out the pros and cons of something that is so small, you’re not sure if you would need to fix it. 

 

By the end of this dilemma that I condemned myself to, there was another question that I had failed to answer along with this one. An added piece of the puzzle that was chipped out, along with that missing part of the wall. The bigger picture, with another hole punctured into it, leaving yet another gaping question, still left unanswered.

 

If no one noticed, if you can’t even decide if you want to fix it or not, then what’s the point?

 

A lot of the time, when we look at all the things we do, we often focus so much on the little things that we think would matter in the end. Trying to make every last bit perfect and ensure that everything is up to a standard that you set for yourself. The constant, striking need for perfection in every way. At some point, it’s blinding. The only thing that matters is if everything is exactly the way you wanted it to be. While wanting to make sure your work is at the best possible level and standard, that doesn't mean all that focus needs to be put into it.

 

In the previous few years, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out that perfect formula for success and perfection in every way. The change, in being able to look past trivial errors, was something that I had never dreamt of needing. 

 

We are constantly being told that we should be fixing ourselves to the best quality as we can, and that the details make up the big picture. But how much of our time is spent just worrying about minor things that most people often overlook? The idea of perfecting something until it is to our perfect ideology, is a consuming thought on its own, and to base all your work on it? I can say with utmost certainty that there will always be a time when you realise it isn’t worth it.

 

Now, when I look back at everything I was doing, I sometimes see myself being so stressed over the tiniest imperfections, and falling into more frustration when no one even noticed that detail. The feeling that it didn’t matter, was even worse than having that small mistake, and even now, I still wish someone had told me earlier.

 

The small mistakes count, but in the end, they are still only small mistakes.

 

Something about those little imperfections, the faint brushstrokes and pencil marks that you can't erase fully, and the typos that you always end up missing through the last revision, or a message that’s just a bit difficult to understand, unless you can talk about it on and on and on. All of it, to be boiled back down to the concept of human nature. 

 

Paintings are only paintings when they're full of the colours that are just a shade too light or dark, much like how people are who they are because of all the mistakes they’ve made, encountered, and achieved through the past. Romanticizing perfection, never has, and will never sit right with me. 

 

Staring at the blank wall that I had left empty for so long, the little dents and marks are still there. sitting across the whole thing like stars in the sky, barely visible, but I’ll always know it’s there. They sit there, and even though they still won’t go away as easily, I’ve learned enough, to know the best option for me would be to simply leave it alone.

Allowing those small mistakes, embracing the imperfections and how they take shape. Realising that it’s okay, to just leave them alone without the disciplined thoughts of needing to fix it.

 

Maybe, I’ll use a post-it note to cover it, a poster that I bought a while back, or a painting where some pencil markings are still just barely visible.