Perfection's one of those funny words that's a double edged sword. On one side, she's really pretty and beautiful, and worth striving for, because if you find her, she'll make you happier beyond all belief. On the other side, she's elusive, impermanent, and totally unattainable. We could do without this idea of perfection in our lives. She's a good one for causing untold suffering.

We might gush that things are perfect when we find them just how we want them to be, but they never last, we lament, rather than treasuring what we've managed to achieve in that moment. The perfect wedding, twenty years later just a handful of faded photographs. The perfect hairstyle, undone by a sleepless night. The perfect child, who being ill, keeps you up all night. The perfect sunshiney day gives way to night, the pain of sunburn and mosquito bites and someone starting a lawnmower at 6 am. Life seems like a handful of perfect moments that never truly last.

I can't hear the words 'perfect day' without thinking of Lou Reed's song:

Just a perfect day

Drink Sangria in the park

And then later

When it gets dark, we go home

Just a perfect day

Feed animals in the zoo

Then later

A movie, too, and then home

Or maybe this one, which the majority of the world would never have heard of, because it's an Australian band from the '80's.

This Perfect Day

I Can't Stop Thinking

Are You Over There

Are You Happy There

And Tell Me

If It's Still Raining There In England

And Tell Me What You Did Last Night

And Tell Me

If It's Still Raining There In England

The Pictures So Hard To Come By

If You Ever Come Back Just Drop By

One Perfect Day,

Listening to both songs, I can hear this tension between the ideal of perfection and the longing for it. The perfect day has been and gone, but can still come again - one perfect day, we will do all the perfect things we dream of and long. One perfect day, we did this magical and beautiful thing that I wish I could recapture. There's always a line between what's lost, and what's desired. Pop songs often work because they connect to these desires within all of us - longing, desire, regret - and pluck painfully at those strings of sensation within our emotional hearts.

As I write this, I'm having a perfect day. It's pissing down with rain and I'm waiting around in town for an appointment. I'm sitting in the back of the van in a sanctuary near the river on the bed under a woolly blanket and writing this post. I've just eaten an entire small block of dark sugar free vegan chocolate and have got a cup of chai cooling on the side. In a minute I'm going to listen to a yoga nidra for half an hour and probably fall asleep for a bit. Then I'll go home and have a bottle of wine with my husband by the fire.

I'm happiest when life is simple. I don't ask for much. Simple things excite me - a swim in the ocean, a laugh with my family, creating, being, loving. The way a bird soars down to land on a wire. Cloud formations. That indigo blur on the ocean's horizon. A solitary leaf winding it's way to the earth. Ah, perfection. I don't like to long for the unattainable past or present - those perfect moments have been or will never be, or will come and go. Suffering comes from those desires.

One of my favourite quotes, perhaps falsely attributed to the Buddha, is this:

"When you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky"

Life is just a darn sight more perfect when you realise that everything is exactly how it should be.

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