Snowflakes are amazingly, wondrously beautiful. They are perfect.
I am told none are the same.
I believe.
Perhaps some start as exact duplicates. Upon interaction of energies in the air, each battle their own runway of spectacular purpose, collectively coming together to illuminate the grounds with luminescent white, sheets to envelope hills, mountains, and fields of cold and yet warm splendor.
How can each be perfect if one to the other flow to be uniquely different?
I perceive. Each snowflake, different. Each perfect, nonetheless.
Perfection within the eyes of perception.
My husband asked me what would be a perfect day for me.
A perfect day for me?
I wake up to no alarm disturbing my full rest.
No one talks to me or tells me anything.
My mind is untampered by any other thoughts.
My thoughts are alone, conversing, commingling, confabulating- seeing which thought will correct the other.
I ask myself what I would like to attack for the day. No one else tells me.
I am within myself.
As I rise and complete my essential morning routines, I choose to complete at least a half hour workout at home where I can catch up on some educational learning via video or audible readings.
Or, by choice, I hit the gym instead, where I enter Zumba, waving and smiling to familiar faces around as I out-dance the child dancing within me to any rhythm.
I get a workout in at home or at the gym. It doesn’t matter which one. A good workout is a good work out.
I let my body choose and my heart, mind, and spirit follow without resistance.
My body is sound complete and steadfastly whole, not torn in different directions.
When the workout is done, I pamper myself to the gym sauna to sweat out further or if found home, add a little extra cardiovascular to equate the same.
Irregardless, still, I am alone with my thoughts, aware of my breathing, as I lead my happy soul to a cool shower, hearing my mind go with the flow of the water.
I finish stronger with a protein smoothie sprinkled with fruits in addition to my water intakes.
By this time, I have asked and answered what my attack for the day will be.
My heart, my mind, and my spirit worked together to help renew my body.
Cleansed of toxins, my body is replenished, ready for whatever is ahead to do for the day.
I attack not with aggression or force but tranquility and harmony, clear and sound heart, mind, body, and spirit to continue my goals for the day.
There are no deadlines or urgency- just peaceful direction of choice.
My purpose is from whatever within tells me. I am not without.
I paint.
I write.
I create.
I architecturally design from simplest to the implausible in my mind while dually enjoying what is transforming before me from what it was to what it is becoming to what it will finally be.
And, my breaks aren’t visible. They are felt within every breath and thought.
I joke to myself. I laugh.
I sing to myself words of music that are mine. I deeply comprehend.
I hug the child within. She dances.
My husband helps to break me away from confining myself to our home by taking a walk outside with me, pushing me momentarily away to what otherwise, I would find myself still consumed to doing, my own thoughts and works within the solace of my quiet room.
Productive. Peaceful. Perfect.
Would that be my perfect day today?
Not quite. I have had many perfect days.
In my travels, no matter the early wake-ups, the language barriers, the conversions, the planned parts or unplanned, each moment, each dissected piece of every given journey- perfect.
And, yet, I can be inside an outlet store, finding something I didn’t know to exist or find for myself or another person next to me and those treasure-hunting moments are without doubt- perfect.
So, what is perfect?
Snowflakes.
With time and chance, each necessitating itself to each moment given, pushing through whatever comes their way before creating a blanket of breathtaking awe.
I’m back in a new school year and other children other than my own rely on me for structural learning.
At home, I give of me beyond what I have known as I continue to play house whilst the world creates its storms around.
I have planted seeds of love, life, and laughter with so much joy.
The air carries and drops by eventual weeds or unplanned seeds of which any could take away or choke up those carefully planted and made.
Still, perfect is found.
At school, I serve others’ children within limitations, a prayer and hope that each child are not quietly facing heavy storms within the gardens they have been placed as they try to grasp learning to strengthen and prepare themselves for their future self.
Even with seeds given you, perfect is still found.
When life gives before you a variety other than the known comfort of within, mindset controls the meaning and sometimes, ask, of perfect.
I can come up with a perfect moment, perfect class, perfect day, perfect week, perfect month, to a perfect year.
Ask me next year or last year and my “perfect” would depend on what kind of year is presented before me.
Perfect at home is when all are safe and sound.
Perfect as a teacher focuses on instruction, one classroom at a time, one different group of over a hundred a year.
Some years, perfect could just mean no one having a moment every moment a moment occurs.
Other years, interestingly enough, in most perfectly sound years, I could knit-pick to suggest the meaning of perfect to a most refined detail.
If all are leaving my classroom still thinking about their thinking as they each walk out of my classroom, this may be considered perfect.
What for those days they think nothing of what they just learned but an honest question was asked, thought about, and discussed?
Or, an incident occurred inside or outside class that caused each to think about their own actions?
Metacognition at its finest nonetheless .
Regardless of what I prepared to present, they each left thinking more than what they had been coming in.
Perfect.
As a mother, as a wife, love, life, and laughter is found and cherished at any given moment.
As a teacher, each moment is dissected like a science. While the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit each provide a part in a child’s life, you may be just an insignificant piece of each one’s atmosphere.
How does one expect exactness of what is meant only for a subjective sense within a moment to call as perfect?
In truth, I have had many perfect days. I just didn’t know it until having reflected upon the outcome at the end of the day.
A tough day could end up perfect just as a perfect start could end up with a much opposite.
This is when the heart, mind, body, and spirit quietly plead for the next break.
That dismissal time before seeing students walk out to leave you for some time to regroup once more- the knowing and anticipation of utter peace.
Alone, without a sound, a perfect nothing else but my deep breath exhaling.
Reset. Recharge. Renew the mind.
That moment? Perfect.
Time with my husband. Time with my children. Time alone. Sometimes, all three in one day. All, perfect in their moment to moment evolved ways.
And, yet, the heaviness of those you love could change your favorite happy place to one filled with broken glass, aches, and pains.
How can anyone suggest purity of the very word, perfect, prior to the essence of its final form?
One must just suggest the effect of perfect mindset upon the affect of its mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual works.
I think, one does not suggest it is good and rest before the work is done.
Done must the work be.
There are thoughts involved. Many thoughts into play. There are goals implemented. Goals that get sectioned, categorized, or simply numbered, prioritized in the order deemed.
When the work is done, one can reflect upon the finish. Only, then, will we have gathered anything as perfect or not.
And, even then, was it really perfect or just leveled as good to great to excellent?
One works toward the other. Yes?
And, isn’t it where we then consider a perfect day one that is sound with our heart, mind, body, and spirit?
While what perfect sounds like or looks like can be preplanned or foreseen and even spoken of, is it not how we truly feel upon reflection that wavers exactness of what is truly perfect?
Is my perfect your kind of perfect, in other words?
To ask in further reflection, if we were to do the very same exact ask of ourselves every day, would we suggest having perfect days every day due to the same routine?
Theoretically, is not a perfect day just so until we perfect it better by the next into even greater perfection?
Are we not just merely suggesting, It is good?
Once we include another into our picture- perfect image, is it still, well, perfect?
Should we expect the right words, actions, and feelings to counter-play perfectly to remain having a perfect day?
Hence, I laugh and think, did not Adam and Eve take away perfection at its finest, perhaps?
I mean, after all, it was good until those two basically changed the script.
Otherwise, what would be good for you would be good for me in naïveté sense for how would we know different?
Good for us would be essentially perfect each day.
And, then, here comes that darn tree of knowledge. That one tree chosen rather than the tree of life and all other trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food.
Just like that, the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit changed.
Metacognition came to be. Thinking about our thinking. Questioning our very thoughts, actions, feelings, and moment to moment being.
That knowledge of more. That welcoming thought of a vacuous mind to now one insatiable for more than ever reaching to enough.
What is a perfect day?
Snowflakes.
Yours will be different from mine. I’ll gamble with that one. I’ll also gamble that my perfect now will not be the same perfect tomorrow.
Snowflakes.
A new school year has commenced. A new gathering of minds but fundamentally same routine to lead.
Perfect moments happily collected with the wonder of reaching a perfect finish awaits to be noted at the moment of each dismissal.
The thing is, no matter the day, harsh or harmless, wherever we may be, perfect sometimes doesn’t care to be noted.
You just keep on keeping on.
Snowflakes.
For the moment, we can look upon the hills, mountains, and fields to see unhindered packs of snow, created by one snowflake at a time.
Melt away, they go. More will come.
Snowflakes.
If not touched, felt, or tasted, they are there to know, imagine, see, or find.
Snowflakes.
