On Perfectionism and Expectations

I think it's because Paris is a dream for mostly everyone who arrives here with wide, dewy eyes and heavy suitcases loaded with expectations higher than their heels which are completely unsuitable for the metro steps. I think it's because we drop everything and everyone and leave it all behind for the throbbing lights of this sleepless city because of the wisdom and wholeness of a city that's seen everything, and we're all just hoping that some of its stardust will rub off on our skin. We see the tower and the bridges and the fairy lights and the canals and the lovers and we miss the greyness in the shadows of any city, no matter how bright its light parts are. And the black parts are what make it beautiful, the depth and dimension of any reality. And that's what we're missing from our psyches, from our images of this city of meticulous architecture and the sheen of lacquered surfaces. We're missing the notion that perfection is a fantasy bred from the fairy tales of expectations sung to us by the legend-tellers of our fathers. We live and breathe these expectations until we come to the brink of  it all and we're here and we're staring its darkness in the face and we're lost and confused and wondering what we're doing here. And we realize perfection can't exist even in a city that starves itself for beauty and even in a city that is leaking with prettiness.
And one could argue that imperfections breed perfection, that perfection cannot exist in a one-dimensional state, that there is no such thing as black or white but simply shades of grey, that perfection can exist if one accepts flaws as a part of its makeup.
There is great power in coming to accept expectations as just that, as a dream that instills visions of perfection into our minds that fuel us to strive for the unachievable. And that can push us to create beautiful things. To see beautiful things and to meet beautiful people on our quest for absolute beauty. But it can also drive us to the brink of insanity, to the depths of emptiness once we are void of the tears of our disappointment, to the edge of giving up entirely. And sadness is in fact a part of beauty and maybe tears are just rivers of prismatic rainbows that signify we are lucky to have something to lose, to miss, to yearn for. That the ability to feel is perfection enough and it wold be a very strange world void of the darkness that makes us scared. That the light would be blinding with no night for relief and that we learn when our expectations are dashed and we have to compromise.
It's about compromise.
There are dark parts to every city and every life and every person.
Maybe one day we can learn to see darkness as beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3S7LCtvy5Q