Ideals

Ideals! they are everywhere, we stick to our ideals of relationships, our ideals of people, our ideals of life, career etc.Latest episode of the television series Brothers and sisters, sparked a thought in me regarding ideals. We are consumed by our ideals, it is very rare to not have an ideal. In fact in todays world, everyone has ideals. In a way they help us in setting our goals, in showing us the way, they help build expectations.Its these ideals that give you hope to wake up in the morning and make the effort. The problem comes when the ideals are shattered.Most of us are always looking for that one bit that you can call "Perfect". We are always in search of that perfect bit and the further we have seen, we tend to term it as perfect, weather its the relationship between your peers or family that you call perfect or the career of your teacher that you call perfect or even the lifestyles of others. We want that perfection in our life, we idealize it and we move forward in hopes of achieving it. this paves way for a simple problem, what if our concept of perfect is not actually perfect? What if there is more than that or what if that only seems as perfect, usually in both cases once you are faced with disappointment, not only over your ideal but of the whole concept and then you start wondering weather its actually worth it. For instance, I hear many people talk about the ideal marriage, the ideal spouse ,"ooh they had such an ideal relationship and it failed, is marriage really worth it". Really? did they really have an ideal relationship, every human, every relationship struggles in their own dimension because failure is a part of success. How do you then create ideals? how do you then build expectations when you know failure is bound to come?

It took me along time to realize this but the biggest lesson we should learn while growing up is that ideals will be shattered and expectations will be destroyed but the only way to adhere to your goals is never give up.Don't give up on your ideals because you have seen others fail to live up to them, who knows maybe one day you can live that ideal but you only find out if you remain consistent. This leads to my second point, don't build your ideals on humans, at the end of the day they are still human beings, just like you. Build your own ideal and try to live up to it.