O Christmas Tree

It has always been our family tradition to go to a nearby tree farm and cut our own Christmas tree. As the kids have gotten older it has become harder to get them together for this event. We all love the smell and beauty of a real tree; but there are certain negatives that, for me anyway, outweigh all that.
While we were cutting our tree last year (minus oldest child due to schedule conflict) I began the argument for an artificial tree. I used all the obvious reasons and even Mother Nature helped me out because that day the wind was blowing about 25MPH - miserable. The long and short of it; my family finally agreed that yes, next year, mom can buy a fake tree.
Fast forward to today. I got our new tree out of the box! Now, here's what struck me funny. We used to spend a fair amount of time finding our "perfect" tree; only to bring it home and find it's hidden flaws. Those flaws usually called for herculean effort in getting the thing to stand up straight and in turning the ugly side to face the wall. Now that I have this perfect fake tree, I spent a fair amount of time trying to make it look "natural"; you know, like a real tree. Oh, yea, I even bought pine scented room fragrance.
Here's the irony that is just so human: We strive for Perfect to look real and Real to look perfect, but Real is never perfect and Perfect is never real.