A few months ago, I was making a quick pasta dish for a midweek dinner when I was complimented on how in control I seemed in the kitchen.

I was doing several things at once. Chopping, stirring, checking, moving between pans and the oven. At one point, without looking, I sensed I had to turn back to stop a pot from boiling over. Apparently, it looked quite effortless.

Earlier today, I was making a similar dish. But this time it was a slow Sunday, so I was able to afford myself a lot more time and had fewer distractions. I cooked with more care and precision. I paid particular attention to the heat on the hob, letting certain ingredients cook more gently rather than rushing them.

So it would have been a big surprise to that same observer that, in the final few moments of cooking, instead of turning the hob off, I turned it up to max, stepped away and let the bottom burn slightly.

Why?

I was thinking of my maternal grandma this morning, and I remembered how, whenever she made pasta, she'd slightly burn the bottom. So I did the same, intentionally 'messing up' something I'd been so carefully making, to feel a bit closer to her.

My grandma's pasta wasn't perfect. But that was what made it imperfectly perfect. I won't eat pasta like that again. I won't jostle with others on the table to get the toasted bits from the bottom of the pan.

Similarly, I'll never eat Bombay aloo quite like my grandmother on my Indian side used to make it. No restaurant is likely to serve potatoes ever so slightly undercooked in exactly the way she always did. That is what made them hers.

These are the things that usually bring a smile to our faces when we think about the people closest to us. These things that in any other context, we'd call imperfections, but we see as quirks. In the people we love, they become part of the texture of who they are, and endear them to us.

Many of us understand this in one domain of life. We can see the beauty in the imperfections of others.

Yet when it comes to ourselves, especially in the outside world, we often aim relentlessly for perfection. We push ourselves to the limit. We put ourselves down when we fall short of standards that were never realistic because they are unattainable.

For high achievers, the idea of aiming for anything less than excellent can feel almost anathema.

But maybe good enough is sometimes more rewarding than perfect. Not because standards do not matter. But because a life spent endlessly refining, correcting, and optimising can leave very little room to actually enjoy what we have made in the moment with those around us.

Sometimes, the thing that makes something memorable is not that it was flawless; it’s that it was unmistakably ours.

Just a thought.

— AJ

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