Perfection

We are permanently bothered with the idea of perfection. I think it arises out of a need to one up ourselves; to keep pushing back the boundaries of what we think is possible. We seek to destroy our limitations. Without holding up this idea of perfection, it really wouldn’t be possible for us to define how far a person’s capabilities can go. We’d be in that horrifying gray space where our brains go haywire. That space where too much unchartered possibility is present. But the more I look at my experiences trying to define the word, the more it occurs to me that most of the time when we talk about something being perfect, our expectations are that others will be able to agree with us. It makes sense. Mostly I expect the people who I share culture with (culture here being defined as shared experience) to agree with something I find pleasant or unpleasant. But it doesn’t really matter how much experience I share with another person, chances are we have still had very individual interactions with the world. That’s why perfection is the result of very specialized experiences and therefore a universal understanding of it is impossible. But this raises another question. If an individual thinks something is perfect and no one else agrees does perfection exist? If I see a ghost and no one else can see it, was the ghost there? I think this is the problem we run in to with our definition of the word. We are invalidating it, saying that it doesn’t exist because everyone is experiencing it so differently.

But what if we stopped thinking of perfection as something that is opinion, or something that just happens—What if we began to see perfection as something created. For instance, before I began intense study of classical music, I was generally not very interested in it. I had to learn why it was beautiful before I could find it that way. Same goes for wine. I don’t think anyone is born enjoying the flavor of fermented grapes. Eventually though, we gather up enough experiences to be able to create the enjoyment for it within ourselves. Creation has always been one of our greatest powers. Perfection is there to help us destroy our limitations, but perhaps this doesn’t mean we have to set the bar higher. Perhaps it means getting rid of the bar altogether and using the power of our minds to look at anything and find where it is absolutely perfect.

I’m going to apply this to my life, right now. I am nowhere near where I thought I’d be at this point. I fully expected, that by now I’d be in grad school, that I’d be living on my own, I’d have much more money in my bank account, that I’d be several lbs lighter, etc. But instead, I find myself, still living at home, not in grad school, not much in the old bank account and pretty much the same weight I’ve been for a couple years now. Yet, I am absolutely happy. I am looking at my place in life and I am seeing how right it is. I don’t have to worry about rent, and I love my housemates deeply. Because Im not in grad school I have the opportunity to do opera programs that take place in the winter, really work on my acting, languages, voice, self-discipline while racking up on real world experience. I am finding work where ever I can which gives my schedule more flexibility to get the things done that I need to get done, and I am fully entrenched in that endless process of loving every centimeter of my body regardless of whether or not vogue magazine would put me on its cover. Essentially, my life is perfect. Not because it settles into that impossible shape our society considers the perfect life to fit into, but because I’ve created the perfection where it didn’t exist before. I’m choosing to notice a world of positive possibilities that are giving me so much to look forward to.

It’s so easy to look at where our relationships are not ideal and feel unsatisfied with them. But they can all be ideal, if we are willing to accept flaws for what they are and allow them to aid in building our concept of what makes something perfect. When Picasso began to make his works more abstract, it became difficult upon looking to see the form of whatever it was he was depicting. That’s because he was getting down to the essence of the thing, and the lack of its precise form made it closer to being real in a way. This is all about finding what we want in what we have, and allowing what we have, to be all we need to get what we want. Even the definition of the word perfection is created with imprecision’s and flaws. Let’s stop looking at things that do not appear pristine as defected and start seeing how the defects aid in making them all they need to be.

I’ll talk about my relationship with my brother. It is certainly flawed, but does that erase its ability to be perfect? Absolutely not! Sometimes it is difficult for us to communicate as it seems like we are involving ourselves in two different worlds, or I ask his opinion on something and his honesty advances the truest answer to me whether I like the way it is said or not, our schedules are almost entirely opposite, which makes it difficult for us to hang out as much as I’d like to. But every now and then we’ll end up getting to smoke a cigar together midday in my back yard, his honest opinion is exactly what I need to hear, or we’ll get to enjoy a TV show together, bond over some music, or talk about some social event where he unexpectedly saw a few friends of mine. Those moments have become special to me because of where our relationship is defected. The universe has a very particular balance that needs to be achieved right down to its most elementary particles. There must be things which we don’t like in order to make up what we do like and vice versa. In that way perfection is no different. If a thing is created entirely out of light, it is too bright for us, we don’t like it. We need a little bit of darkness to make it mean something.