Hopeful Thinking - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - Uniform Perfection

We love to declare that nothing is perfect. It makes us feel better for the flaws we see everywhere and in ourselves. We especially take comfort in the idea that no one is perfect because it lets us off the hook for our own insufficiency. We feel it is preferable to call out our shortcomings in advance just to make sure that others know our damage is not unknown to us. We make fun of ourselves first, that no one beats us to it.

Yet I think we’ve been looking at the wrong part of ourselves when deciding whether or not we are perfect. I think we need some schooling on what is and isn’t perfect about our existence.

Years ago I purchased my first “self-healing” cutting mat. It’s designed to close the thin gash made from scoring it with a razor when using it to cut paper or fabric. The slight scar left behind isn’t really gone or utterly invisible, but it is minimized. It prolongs the life of the mat versus those whose scars accumulate and too soon gauge the surface beyond use. Clever. Put that in the back of your mind for a moment.

There is only one, single overarching human desire, the deep pull of which every single one of us feels. It’s to simply feel better. We seek to improve upon our state and our species. It is an inner-directive so deep and uniformly present that when we work against it, either consciously or un, we are typically devastated by the results.

No one actually wants to feel bad, or do badly, or truly be bad. But we struggle with believing in our own goodness or perfection because we know things of ourselves about which we feel shame, whether deserved or not. Many of us spend at least a little if not most of our time believing we are not worthy of feeling better. We believe that the truth of who we are, the secrets no one else knows, are hidden proof of our great disappointment to the Creator. We pray that no other human sees it. It’s bad enough that God knows.

This, however, is the truth: Our mistakes do not have the power to define our perfection. Our failures are not a part of the etymology of the word perfect. The word perfect means ‘complete, thoroughly done.’ What does that mean? I believe it is suggesting our perfection lies in what is already complete about us. Our design.

We are designed to be self-healing, self-correcting, self-improving. We are created to be vigilant toward our preservation and fulfilment. Our scars are present from the knives we’ve known, but barely visible anymore. Our lives are prolonged in direct proportion to the practice of healing and feeling better.

That inner-directive is our perfection.

We don’t always behave perfectly, but we are made perfectly. We are each a geniusly conceived and holistically functioning system of infinite complexity. We are, by design, hospitable to a biome of trillions of simple and complex lifeforms within our bodies which symbiotically help us to physically survive and thrive, as well as emotionally evolve. We are entire colonies of life and diversity and purpose, operating in microscopic concert to improve the macroscopic system. Poetry.

We have boundless creativity and imagination and ingenuity which we use to do whatever we must to simply feel better. Regardless of the form that action may take.

Sometimes we do insidious and evil things in the name of trying to make ourselves feel better. We occasionally forget that feeling better is a universal right. To make someone feel worse in order for you to feel better is simply moral junk food. It will make you sick in the end, even if it tastes so good at the beginning.

We have chosen to protect ourselves with an armor made from a manufactured faith in life’s imperfection. We feel safer when we believe we see the danger. But that is the resistant path. Consider becoming more allowing of mistakes and failures, and the purpose they might hold. Attempt to be nonresistant to the apparent fallibility of life; things are not always as they appear. Try to be at peace with your own shortcomings and you will be more peaceful about the inadequacies of others. What could be more perfectly made than something which naturally desires more peace?

Engage with life under an assumption that at the core of its creation, all is perfect already. That is not the part which needs to be improved upon. Perfection is not an unreachable goal toward which we needn’t bother to journey. It is literally the sacred path beneath your feet, already perfect in its design, as well as in its choice of pilgrim.