We, as human beings, are always striving for perfection. We want the perfect job, the perfect partner, and the perfect family. In this quest, however, few succeed in any of their aspirations for even a short period of time.
Many people, including myself until recently, say that you should aim high if you want to come near your goal. Nevertheless, I would like to hereby make a case against the strife for perfection on these grounds:
The navigator on a journey to perfection will be most deeply hurt by an imperfection when the journey is nearly complete.
The perfect job or the perfect partner or the perfect family is, of course, unattainable; many people are simply trying to get as close to it as possible. The navigator of a ship on its journey to perfection will learn when he nears his destination that in the land of perfection, any small imperfection in the ship can cause it to sink.
When a situation is in a perfect state, it cannot tolerate any misgivings. Anything that happens that is less than expected will be devastating. A family of people who hates each other will be relatively unaffected if one of the cousins becomes a wanted criminal; however, a "perfect" family will become distraught if one of the cousins fails to graduate from medical school.
When a near-perfect state is attained, the attainers are clearly very capable of maintaining such a state. However, the negative influence will come from outside rather than inside. Not only can one bad girlfriend or wife or boyfriend or husband can destroy a person's interactions with their perfect family, but collections of militant tribes has succeeded multiple times in destroying the potency of an entire empire (as with the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Mongols, Alexander's empire, the British Empire, and a multitude of others). The founder of the "perfect" state may be spared, but the perfection itself will find its way into a tailspin.
A state of near-perfection can be maintained only in an isolated society; once outside influences become involved, the innocent inhabitants of the perfect society are exposed to the rest of the world and are rarely able to maintain their perfection. They will instead fall into the clutches of temptation and, as many wealthy families can attest to, will annihilate the hard work of their predecessors in less than a generation's time.
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2 comments:
First, this post is rather vague and I wonder about the precints that brought you to this post.
In any case, the problem is I think, the vague defn. of "Perfection." Is it the idealization of ones values? or simply the answer from intuition.
My thoughts:
I like to think of perfection as a sort of fulfillment of one's dharma (Borrowed from the Hindu/Buddhist Philosophy). A perfect student is a student who achieves his/her dharma. A perfect husband/wife is the husband/wife who fulfills his/her dharma. [I wouldn't know about perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, as I lack any experience to even think of what a possible dharma is] A perfect thief would be one that fulfills his/her dharma. The perfect life would be one that fulfills its dharma. Now what this dharma is could be a rigorous debate. But i think in this sense perfection can be achieved.
And the most important part to note is that if the dharma is attained, a state of perfection is attained. I think this answers why a perfect family will be distraught ...
Furthermore, state of perfection is conditional: a perfect student may not be a perfect husband/wife and so on. I also think that this notion of perfection is in many ways more individualistic than collevistic. There are limitations as often ones thoughts are biased by the society, but in a direct sense, it is solely based on the individual's notion of dharma.
I think the reason many cannot achieve this perfection is that (1) they don't realize what their dharma is (2) if they do so, then they are too lazy to achieve this (I in many cases fall into this)
I think this is a reasonable analysis of Perfection. Tell me what you think.
Buddham sharanam gacchami
Sangham sharanam gacchami
Dharmam sharanam gacchami
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