I am not a nature specialist. But I could not resist talking about what I saw on my recent hike in the Washington mountains.

I saw a leaf — it was perfectly symmetrical. Then I looked around and saw many leaves, trying to find similar patterns. Every leaf was different, yet symmetrical in its own way. Then I noticed their parent — the tree — standing quietly in one place, generating thousands of such perfectly symmetrical leaves without any human intervention.

The tree had been standing for hundreds of years, growing perfect symmetry, letting the leaves go and then growing them all over again. It withstood the most challenging weather conditions but never fell — it kept producing perfection. Some trees produced leaves bigger than my palm; some smaller than my finger. One thing was common — perfect symmetry.

After coming home, I tried to draw a perfect square on paper. I failed miserably. I kept failing until I took the help of geometrical tools. Only then could I measure and draw an almost perfect square.

I often fail just as measurably when trying to maintain harmony between work and personal commitments. I look into my life and see that almost nothing is in perfect symmetry. I have put so much effort into bringing life into perfect balance — a feat that is effortlessly achieved by a tree for thousands of leaves each year. What the tree is able to produce without external tooling, I could not do with all the resources available to me.

One day, I was sipping coffee on my balcony, watching and listening to raindrops across the garden. I saw a leaf again — lying on the ground, detached from the tree. It was almost dried up, ready to become compost, ready to help other plants grow.

I realized that it is in the tree’s nature to produce perfect symmetry. It is not in the leaf’s nature to remain in it. And it may not be in my nature to produce it either.

I should probably accept the asymmetry in my life rather than trying to make it perfect. Nature will find a way to make me useful — just as it did for the dry leaf.

Maybe perfection is not something to be achieved but to be observed.
And maybe, somewhere, an observer would see symmetry in my actions —
just as I once saw it in the tree.