Why do we seek perfection?

Maybe, we seek perfection to surmount ourselves.

Perfection. Do we desire to be successful and beautiful? How does the ideal success look like? Perfect beauty?

We could consider the success as the achievement of the planned goal. We can make some plans that we will finish the university, that we will become CEO of the company which, for many years, we have been part of, that we will build our own company from the very beginning, that we will be involved in a big project, that we will be simply appreciated for our work. The success can be represented by anything to us. It is entirely up to us what form we give to it. And it is completely up to us what plan we choose to achieve our goal. It seems to be simple – we have a goal, we have a plan how to achieve the goal, we won’t miss the success.

But is it really that simple? Is it possible to plan everything and just meet the partial goals one by one, which will lead us to the main goal, to the desired success? What role does the chance play? Are we taking into account that, in the end, everything can be completely different? As the French writer François René de Chateaubriand said: „those masterpieces have to be created during the fortunate moment when taste and genius come together, and this rare conjunction, like in case of some planets, occurs only after the evolution of several cycles and lasts only a moment“. Then, why are we setting goals which represent success for us? Some ideal success for us? Why are we making plans? Why do we make perfect plans when all it takes is one detail which can destroy our efforts in an instant and when we probably just need to be in the right place at the right moment?

And, in addition to being successful, we desire to be absolutely beautiful. But how the beauty ideal looks like? It seems that the way we think of beauty varies not only according to the culture we are situated in, but also according to the epoch we are living in. Moreover, for each of us, the idea of beauty is represented by something completely different, by someone completely different.

And so we transform our image based on the imperative of the desire to have perfect body, perfect look. And so we evaluate, according to our standards of ideal beauty, also other people, our partners. And so some of us try to change other people so that they meet their idea of perfection. And so we often chase an artificial ideal model, which is also changed according to the current preferences. And does that necessarily mean something bad? And what’s the motivation behind that?

Could the imperfection within us be the point which motivates us to strive for success and for perfect beauty? If we perceive ourselves to be imperfect, do we desire to find perfection outside of us? Do we consider perfection as something transcending us? What makes more sense to us then? It was the Indian writer and guru Sri Chinmoy who said that we demand, or at least expect, more perfection from other people than from ourselves. When we fail to find perfection within ourselves, do we wish that other people were perfect instead of us?

And is the perfection something static or the process itself? The American writer William James Durant said that we are what we repeatedly do, so the perfection is not an act but it is a habit. And no one is perfect who does not strive to be more perfect. (Tristan Bernard) And as Oscar Wilde said: „a man does not achieve his perfection by what he has, or even by what he does, but only by what he is“. In the end, the perfection is perhaps about striving for something. Probably, it is not some particular form of success or some ideal of beauty as a model. In the end, it’s probably the effort itself and our actions and who we become. So, what is essential, perhaps, it is the motivation that drive us forward in life and that pushes us to keep working on ourselves. And perhaps, the perfection consists in the process of becoming a person for whom inner well being is the main trait, a person with numerous life experiences. Then, we could be familiar with the statement of one businessman and marketer Seth Godin who said that waiting for perfection is never as good as moving forward.

As Tomas Bata mentioned: „success depends on a knowledge and an experience in one specific discipline; to know one thing perfectly from all perspectives, to admire only this one thing, to believe in this and to focus your brain and your heart on this one thing without any question, to lie down with the thought of it, to get up with the thought of it, to know everything that destroys it, everything that affects it badly, in brief, to concentrate – this is the way to success“. And no matter if we are looking for perfection when looking in the mirror, or in another person, or in our profession, or in some other activity to which we are dedicated, we may never see it, because we may never understand that perfection can only be seen if we like that one thing, that one person, that one activity, if we believe in something or someone, if we dedicate our whole heart to that, as Tomas Bata said, going to bed with that in mind and getting up with that in mind, because maybe it is through this dedicated time and this hard work that we can see perfection, perfection made for us, perfection that exists in the time we sacrifice. Our individual perfection.

Because if we try to reduce perfection to something static, unchangeable, defined, located outside us, it must inevitably, even if we approach to it, escape through our fingers. As Socrates said: „there are two dominating and leading principles in each of us, whose guidance we follow wherever they lead us; one is the innate desire for pleasure, the other is the acquired judgment which strives for perfection, but how beautiful and unattainable is the perfection of man.“ And, on the other hand, if we try to define perfection in this way, as something or someone ideal, what form will it take? After all, as Erich Maria Remarque remarked: „I hate perfection, it is not human“.

Then, it is possible that, as Raymond Douglas Bradbury said, total perfection leads to total emptiness. Because perfection does not require perfection (Henry James), and, perhaps, love means that we do not love many people even though they are perfect, but we love some people even though they are imperfect (Achille Charles De Broglie). And, as the French surgeon and biologist Alexis Carrel mentioned, „man can only achieve perfection when he lets his beauty dissolve in love.“

And so we may not be perfect, but we can handle it perfectly.

V.