Mentalechoes

So it’s been a couple of weeks since the last post, mainly because I was getting the new domain sorted out. Now mentalechoes.org is finally up and hosting my blog. I’m really happy with the new domain name and having my blog reside in it, because it is much more meaningful than my old domain name, and more aptly describes what my blog is essentially about.

It’s funny though, coming up with this new domain name was the first time I have done something in recent life that I didn’t rush (I have a bit of a habit of being a rusher). My first domain name I spent probably 10 minutes max thinking about it whilst I was sitting in front of a domain registrars registration form. Hence the more or less meaningless - and totally made up - word that was to become my domain name. The second time around though, I think I must have been working on it for near on 3 weeks if I add up all the time I spent writing down names in a little pad on the metro ride to and from work. I always had this rolling shortlist of cool names that I was going to use, but somehow none of them seemed perfect. And what I was aiming for was perfection, if there was such a thing you could attribute to a domain name. No matter how hard I tried though, I could never find that perfect name.

It was through this little exercise that I started to see wider patterns in my own life; namely always chasing perfection but never being able to acheive it. For some people, it is okay for them to be less than perfect, they’re comfortable with who they are and they don’t aspire to be better tomorrow than what they are today. In many ways I envy people like this because they are happy, and they never suffer from the frustration of staying the same. I know too that I am not alone in being a perfectionist, there are a lot of people out there - I know many - who constantly strive in themselves to be not just better, but perfect. Here in lies the cruelist of jokes, because the universe has made it so that we can’t be perfect, we can only ever be less than perfect, and that means we can never live up to our own goals. For me, I find this a source of frustration in my life at times, and one that can be hard to accept.

I’m starting to see as I get older though, that life isn’t about being perfect, but about learning to be happy with your limitations, and accepting what you are, so as to not be constantly struggling to fit an ideal that can’t be attained. That’s not to say that I think we should stop trying to be better tomorrow than what we are today, but we should be happy with trying our best regardless of the actual outcome. Because in the end, it is the effort of betterment which is really meaningful, rather than being perfect in itself.

And so, after realising I would never have a perfect domain name, I choose the name at the top of my favourites list and registered it on the internet. It may not be the perfect domain name, but it’s perfect enough for what I wanted, and I’m happy with it. In life too, we should try to be satisfied with our day to day acheivements no matter how small, and be happy with ourselves, rather than be dissapointed when we see how far we have fallen short of our own perfect ideal.

Padwanna.