“Perfect” is a silly word, and it deserves disinvention. I present here my argument why. Despite the logic, knowing what I know and feeling how I feel have disconnected. This is my attempt to inhabit the world I know to be the most “real,” and hardly “perfect.”
Perfection is an off or on, black or white, falsely constructed binary. Perfection does not exist in our natural world, but only in our imagination. We can trick ourselves into a “fixed” mindset or victim mindset. If I can’t have the “perfect” body, why work on my diet behavior? Why work on my movement behavior if I won’t look like the folks on TV? We see an unreachable goal and give in to the despair of imagined permanence. And sadly, it isn’t even “real,” but a trick of the mind.
There is no “perfect.” I realize now that I will never do my tai chi form perfectly, despite my years of practice. There is always learning. There are always mistakes. I am getting better at understanding this. It is a process of improving in motion.
There is no perfect job. No perfect house. No perfect life partner. No perfect child. No perfect person. No perfect…life.
Even when we have achieved “perfect,” we know how imperfect it really was. My “perfect” 4.0 for my recent master’s degree was far from it, because I know the revision and extra work I had to put in to even get close to deserving those grades. I am still shocked I did it–I know how “in process” I still am as a student and human being.
There is just “getting better.” Keeping at it. Improving. Finding a better version of yourself. Finding peace with the imperfection of ourselves and our world.
It’s one thing to know something logically, but quite another to feel it, to own it, to make it part of your daily practice. That has been my issue with the “prison” of perfection, and it remains a challenge for me still. Though I “let go” of perfection in one area, I hold tight in another, even to the point of self-destructive behavior. I have to keep focusing on seeing the world as it really is, and not as my inner critic and inner defender would claim it to be. I have to work every day toward my “creator” or “growth” mindset.
The peace seeking faiths of our world teach us this concept–we forgive the sins of others, but understand we ourselves deserve that same forgiveness as we inevitably make mistakes. This wisdom is thousands of years old, but still applies to our daily lives.
The hard part is “feeling” it, owning it, making it part of ourselves. Like many of the things we must feel, logic can only go so far. At some point we have to “let go” and know that perfection not only doesn’t exist in our future, but it never existed at all.
This YouTube performance by Prince Ea and others demonstrates this concept quite beautifully: https://youtu.be/LySC3v5geAc
stickingwithit 