When we see something we recognize as perfect, we often recoil even as we marvel at its beauty. But why is perfection so intimidating? Is it because we know how much work goes into achieving it? Is it because we know it’s always just out of reach? Or is it just another impossible standard?
There’s something almost unnatural about perfection. We need to see the warts on the frog to know it’s real, you know? It’s hard to trust anything that doesn’t have a feel of being weathered or tussled, and without even slight flaws. When things get too close to perfect, it can be scary.
1. Any guesses how much time it took to wrangle these cables?
2. I will never make a waffle this perfect.
3. The Nasir Al-Mulk Mosque in Iran, completed in 1888.
4. Floating staircase that’s as attractive as it is forbidding.
Would you be brave enough to climb them?
5. The Heydar Aliyev Concert Hall in Azerbaijan.
6. Students gathered for an assembly staying completely in the shade.
7. Beautifully arranged stonework.
8. Military precision even applies to mothballed planes.
9. The water effects on the “Storm before Glory” diorama.
10. When you’re 100 percent confident in your truck’s clearance.
11. A snowball so perfect it would be a shame to throw it.
12. The fine, sharp lines on this sandcastle.
13. Golf pencils arranged so well you don’t want to take one.
14. A fiber-optic dress.
15. This soap that looks like a PB&J sandwich.
16. These markers in a bucket.
17. Dungeons and Dragons, anyone?
18. This succulent.
19. These boxes which lined up just right.
20. These juice boxes.
21. And finally, this toothpaste swirl.
22. Perfect petals on this flower.
