It was a Friday morning and a holiday was declared for all schools in Chennai due to the heavy downpour the previous night. I was overwhelmed with joy because a holiday meant that the deadline for submitting my assignment would get postponed to Monday.
As my monthly tests were fast approaching, I sat down to work out a few sums in maths.
Inaccuracy
I was solving a problem which was related to the volume of a sphere when my mind wavered into thoughts. This was subsequently followed by a puzzled state of my mind. It had just struck me that the value of Pi which is used in calculating a sphere's volume is irrational. Even though a sphere has a definite volume, the usage of Pi would lead only to an approximate measurement of its volume.
This realisation made me wonder why the formula for calculating a sphere's volume is universally accepted even though it does not yield an accurate or “perfect” answer.
I put this issue to my mother and she told me that nothing is ever perfect and that we all live amidst things that are imperfect. I looked around my house and pondered for a while. Nothing seemed perfect.
My bookshelf which is always termed “cluttered” was in the most cluttered condition it could be in. My books were piled up in a haphazard manner.
I then shifted my gaze to the CD racks in the hall which are perceived as being “neatly organised”. The CDs in the shelf were arranged according to a certain order, but I noticed that a few CDs were occupying places which were not designated to them.
A neatly polished shoe had a small patch of dust on its side, near the sole. This speck of dust, in other words is called “negligible”.
I realised that flaws are inevitable. Nothing is perfect; what makes the difference is how near to perfection a particular person or thing is.
Striving hard
We need to urge ourselves to be perfect. We have to work harder and harder at every stage of our lives to get closer to perfection. In this process, we improve our abilities, eliminate existing flaws and gain mental strength. And there we are, filled with enthusiasm, relief and a sense of success for having moved a step nearer to perfection.
But Alas! This feeling is short-lived, because when you look ahead, you realise that you need to climb a million more steps before you reach perfection just as you need to add a million more digits to the right of 3.14 to get the most precise measure for the sphere's volume!
JAYANTHI Y., IX, The Hindu Senior Secondary School
