Short read: The Misfit Tree

It’s that time of the year when there is general cheer all around. Work related stress eases a bit as people go on breaks. Families get together as kids come home from college or relatives and friends living abroad making their annual trips home. Some of us are looking forward to that long-planned vacation. Yet, we find reasons to be unhappy, mostly chasing that elusive perfection, these days exacerbated by what we see on social media. Ted Lamade gives us a timely blog on why we should celebrate life’s imperfections. He remembers how his father would bring home a Christmas Tree every year only for his mother to invariably find a flaw in the tree.

“Hole on one side. Dead patch in the middle. Leaning hard to the left. An obvious flat top. You name it, we’ve had it.

For years my brother and I would go into full blown “PR mode” after the tree went up, saying things like:

“The tree will look nice once it drops.”

“Dad did his best.”

“It’s Christmas — give him a break.”

But candidly, we kept asking ourselves the same question, how does this keep happening?!?!

I mean, my mom wasn’t wrong. These trees nearly always had something wrong with them.

That is, until my brother and I finally saw him in action on the lot last year.

…Practically the minute we walked onto the lot, my dad pointed to the first nine-footer he saw and said – “We’ll take that one.” Huh? Was this a joke??

Then it all made sense. This is how he had managed to bring home an imperfect tree year-after-year. He didn’t search. He didn’t compare. He didn’t think about how a tree would look after it “dropped.” He simply saw one that looked good enough and bought it. Witnessing what had just happened, the two of us turned to him and said,

“What are you doing? You cannot be serious!?!?”

He then looked at us like we were the crazy ones and said,

“What do you mean ‘am I serious’? Of course I am serious. Your mother will find something wrong with any tree I bring home, so why spend an hour in the freezing cold looking for one?”

Here’s the thing. He wasn’t wrong. But there was more to it.

My dad has always been drawn to the oddball. The misfit. The underdog. The one with “character.” Deep down, I think he liked “rescuing” the ugly tree from the lot. I even think he got a kick out of imagining the moment Mom would see it and deliver the annual critique. The whole thing amused him.

And truthfully, we have laughed about our trees every year. The one with the massive hole. Ole Flat Top. The one that looked like it had fallen over six times. Best yet, after critiquing them initially, almost every year my mom eventually comes around to liking these trees.

Which leads me to the real point.

People think Christmas is about perfection – the perfect house, the perfect photo, the perfect gifts, the perfect everything. But the moments we actually remember aren’t the flawless ones.

We remember the misfit tree.

We remember freezing with our dad in the Christmas tree lot, the uncle who had a few too many adult beverages, and the overly dry turkey.

…Yet, somewhere along the way, we lost sight of this. Perfection, or the perception of it, has become the goal. We curate our lives on YouTube through highlight reels and post our airbrushed photos from vacation on Instagram. It’s why people are increasingly using artificial intelligence to “perfect” nearly everything they do. And yes, it’s why people are increasingly buying artificial Christmas trees….because they are easier to set up, cleaner to maintain, and “perfect” in so many ways.

But here’s the question:

By attempting to remove all the imperfections in life, are we removing the stories? The moments that make us laugh? The mistakes and imperfections that make us uniquely human?”

Alphabet (which runs YouTube through Google) and Meta (which runs Instagram) are part of Marcellus’ Global Compounders Portfolio managed from GIFT City, regulated by IFSCA. Marcellus and its affiliates may hold positions in these stocks. References are provided solely for informational purposes in the context of the discussed article.

Here’s wishing our clients, partners and readers a Merry Christmas !!