The Temple of Perfection

Sid spent most of his life searching for the place of perfection. He always felt that perfection would come after he had achieved certain goals: graduating school, paying off debts, tending to poisonous relationships and so on. But every time he came close to what he was looking for, the end of the rainbow seemed to be just out of reach. It was like a dream, where the secrets of the universe are so close that one can smell their stardust, but the answers are always obscured by something or tucked away around a corner.

After a lifetime of spaces and voids drifted by, Sid sat in his car one morning at the break of dawn. The sun appeared in cloaks of pink and purple, and for a moment before him was humble, silent perfection. It was at that moment he realized that perfection could only be defined by the existence of imperfection. Perfection was the space between, be it light or dark. The sun would quickly rise to disappear amid the din of highways, airplanes and river loading docks. But Sid had witnessed it and seized it before it passed. "This moment is perfect," he whispered to himself.

There would be many more moments he would whisper this to himself; moments at dawn, moments in thunderstorms, moments enjoying the company of his wife and daughter. These moments were the building blocks of Sid's temple of perfection that was built in nonlinear time.