Not Quite Ideal

Chemistry taught me that ideal gas doesn't exist. Life taught me that ideal doesn't exist. And at times I tend to forget this and hope for, fight for and get all upset if I don't get the ideal. During rare moments of clarity, my subconsience reminds me that ideal is born from an idea of perfection and is never achievable. But that doesn't mean that we stop trying to achieve it.

Take for instance the big debate the country is engrossed in these days: Delhi elections. I support the Aam Aadmi Party and every other day I am engaged in passionate arguments on why they deserve a chance. My shrill statements are often met with reasonable and sensible counter points that they are too young politically, they have set the expectations of the people too high, Arvind Kejriwal might be a good person but the same cannot be touted for his entire party. So on and so forth. I agree they are not perfect. But then, who is? Their aim of making Delhi an ideal state and India an ideal country struck a chord with me. Their ideas maybe a little too idealistic but I, like so many more voters, got hooked on their fiery passion and sincerity. They are far from perfect and have heaps to learn and I want to give them a chance to reach closer to perfection and learn more. How much worse can it get than the current situation?

Another instance. Professionally, I am no where close to my idea of where I should have been at the age of 25. I am almost 9 months away from that milestone and I don't see myself getting where I wanted to be. It is not the company's fault, it is not my fault. I do not regret any decision I made. But I am pacified because I put in sincere efforts to reach where I wanted to be. I might be somewhere midway but I am proud that I reached here on my own. I could have done more. There is always scope. And I am still making efforts. Even if I reach there a couple of years later, it won't be ideal, because ideal doesn't exist. But it will be close :)

More close to home, my marriage is far from my ideal of marriage. Bobby is not the ideal that I had imagined. He has never taken me to a surprise candle light dinner, infact the poor guy can't stomach any surprise. We don't watch How I Met Your Mother together. He probably won't even know what it means. He won't play scrabble with me. He doesn't do the man's job around house.

But we go to street side parantha places in the middle of the night. We laugh till our stomach hurt watching old Sunny Deol movies and dubbed Tollywood movies after work. I wrestle him up every morning and he makes me run around the house giggling and screaming as soon as he gets back home from work. He might leave the man's jobs to me, but he sure gets the vegetables and milk and does the laundry. (*sigh* I love him like a lovestruck teenager)

Point being, ideal may not always be the best. At times, the journey is far more interesting, engaging, eye opening and satisfying than the end point. More important than the end point are the efforts you make to reach there and the rewards those efforts reap.

I have reaped many of them and some are still in the pipeline. I know they might not be ideal. But then, I don't think I'll care much about that till the time I am happy! :)