Habits die hard. Habit of talking, many of us practice, required or not, we “know it all”. The talk takes different forms from friendly chit-chat, sweet nothings, comments to criticisms and advises. The interesting part is in the interpretations we associate with the talk.

The profession of teaching has many listeners. There are many fresh faces waiting eagerly to absorb the “lessons of life”. They feel their teacher/professor is “perfect” and the young adults declare they are far inferior to their teacher.

“Perfect”? How often has one teacher/professor faced the situation to tell their student that, “perfection comes with practice and constant learning”. Not wanting to dishearten them though. “Thank you. I appreciate”. The words bring smile on their faces.

Whether it is a passing statement or they truly mean it, those words are reassuring. Years might have been spent in the classrooms and countless faces should have interacted and distracted, but the habit of finding happiness in talks is relieving.

Perfection is infectious when it comes to journalistic expressions, creative writing or any form of artistic venture including daily cooking and leading one’s life. And as the teacher walks down the corridors to the staff room, she introspects her journey – the word looming large still.

Are we actually perfect?” Indeed we are perfect the way we are. But the perfection we inculcate through knowledge, wisdom and experience are meant to gain acceptance with others.

Keeping quiet to a comment is misinterpreted. Failing to acknowledge, when lost in thoughts, also gets misinterpreted. Every expression has a tendency to testify to a smile or a frown. Yet, each one of us feels perfect about oneself. We advise the other, again surrendering ourselves in expressions we best believe, with a picture we like to paint for ourselves.

A perfect talk, to me, is an imagery. The larger picture is “simple” and “perfect”.