Almost perfect

In this world there are people. We talk, we laugh, we discuss, we debate, and we learn. Everyone has something they want, and everyone has a way of going about getting it. In the end we all just want to be understood, and more than that we want someone that understands and supports us. True, we don't want a lemming that agrees with us on everything, but we do want someone to be there to tell us they understand why we feel the way we do. You can spend years and years looking for that feeling, and sometimes it seems to be everywhere around you. It might be where you were born, where you make your friends, or maybe you're just the type that everyone loves and wants to be around. No matter where it might be, we all despise perfection. We can't handle perfection. We have so many insecurities that when love comes along and we fall madly in love with that person, we start looking for something wrong. "Why in the world would they want to be with me?" or "How am I supposed to compete with a Saint?" We live our whole lives trying to be better, more noticed, and more exciting than others that we start to compete with love. We get trapped in this "can I do better than this?" mentality and we stop letting our actual heartfelt feelings guide us and instead inject a lethal competitive poison into our blood stream, making us ignorant to the simple fact, we want to be loved.
I've advocated the viewpoint of "never settle" my entire life, it's been my guide, my inspiration, and my motivation for almost everything I do. I stand by that with a fervent resolve, but still we need to know when enough is enough and we should just be happy to be in love. It's an amazing feeling that shouldn't be short-changed, disregarded, or corrupted. Once we stop trying to outdo someone else, once we start to learn to love ourselves, and once we let others appreciate every little part of our personality, we begin to go back to basics. We get back to an era when playing house was fun, when you needed a dog, when kisses were cute, and when someone wasn't playing fair you let them know (even if it was in a whining sob.) When you grow up, you dedicate so much of your life trying to distinguish yourself, but truth be told you already are the most unique you can ever be. Reluctance in relationships will destroy any hopes of finding happiness with others. When we think long and hard enough about it, we don't want someone perfect because we know that we aren't perfect. We all have flaws and quirks that make us tarnished, maybe even broken, but when you see those marks as paint on a canvas instead of cracks in a vase, you realize that maybe you really are perfect. That's right, the one thing we run away from just might be the one thing we are.
Perfect doesn't have to mean without vice, in fact, some of our vices make the most brilliant colors on our personality canvas. There are strange people out there that love others that gets angry, that are too talkative, that argue too much, that don't have social skills, that are incomparably clumsy, and that say all the wrong things. But when we love these imperfections because it makes them endearing, and not because it makes us better, we find define perfect. In the search for or against perfect, we will always find it. There is someone out there, waiting for us all. They are a mess, they have flaws, they do dumb things, and if you looked long and hard enough so do you. That is perfection at its finest.
In the end, we are all the compliment of another. When we find that one person we love, they will have everything you don't, and you will be missing everything they have. They won't be perfect for everyone, but then again, would you call a puzzle piece imperfect? Let the pieces fall where they may, and maybe you'll find out that even though you're not perfect, you'll find you're so much more. You're vital to someone's happiness. So why not look for something perfect? And this is my favorite cup of philosophy tea.