Togetherness with the Imperfect
Beyond Mindfulness, toward Integrated and Accepting World View
Mindfulness with the moment and with oneself is very beneficial to improve our connection with ourselves and our environment as the moment unfolds, by way of remaining open and penetratingly aware while experiencing the living of life, and also by way of sometimes engaging in meditation dedicated to feeling oneself more truly.
But in the wealth of reading material available to us on mindfulness, often the subject of world view to consider or adopt while remaining mindful gets looked over or left unmentioned and independent. This is understandable, as such world view opinion turns toward personal philosophies and personal religious views, regarding which many authors steer clear. This avoidance of world view advice given on mindfulness is typically done out of respect for the reader. Another reason this is typically done is in order to pass on wisdoms of mindfulness and meditation to readers, regardless of the readers’ personal philosophies or religious views. This is admirable, and much can be taught in this manner, but in this article I aim to go beyond mindfulness, toward personal “togetherness” with the world around us, and the other peoples of this world around us.
Advocacy of Imperfection to from Very New/Clean to Very Decayed/Messy
Idealism must be considered and understood, and it must be rejected philosophically and resisted in our daily thinking and ongoing evolving world view. Idealism looks for the larger than life, the better than the rest, and the perfect concept or reality to invest in, above all the former contenders. It is important to sometimes consider this pitfall, idealism, and consider its sometimes attractive lure, mentally heading down the idealist’s path briefly, to see just how cold and hard it gets, demanding too much of something, and ultimately, everything.
Ugliness and Suffering in Minority Corners
What to think of a universe and world where terrible atrocities and ugly crimes can occur, and great abject suffering can exist? Many of us avoid this sort of question, in an effort to remain positive and not wax negative. However, such questions must be posed to the self, and reconciled with, or an unanswered gap in our world view shows itself as a trouble spot. For my personal world view, I have chosen to adopt a likely unprovable tenet — of what I feel this universe and world is imbued with to make it unfold as it does. To me, there is something fundamental to the nature of nature which is a freeing and allowing force, and which thus allows for the sometimes and in some cases existence of ugliness and suffering, but which is such a beautiful force in its freeing and allowing, that it is also the very root and foundation of all that is beautiful and good in nature and life. Though it is important that ugliness and suffering are “allowed” and “can exist” with this force in play in life, it is also important to consider that abject cases of suffering and ugliness are infrequent, and the worse the rarer, over time and over geometric sampling. To me, that is a key factor of the way this universe is.
Flaw in Every Detail
This freeing and allowing force, inherent to all matter, space, energy, and time in nature and in this universe, I attribute to a property to “everything” that I term “flaw,” which can go by the alternative term “imperfection.” The term “imperfection” merely places the reality and substance some distance away from impossible sheer infinitive perfection, whereas “flaw” does nicer in that it attributes this “key feature” into the fiber of everything. For me, the term “flaw” loses its former implication of defective or inferior, and gains a new implication of mere “differ.” At it’s root, if two things differ in any way at all, then they are, in a way, “flaws” in each other, to this scientific world view. This way, everything gets the character accolade and personality of being “a flaw” without leaving anything missing or unincluded.
Advocacy of Imperfection
Time and time again many of us wind up disillusioned, dissatisfied, and disappointed in people, societies, nature, and life itself. This is because typically all we do is at best make regrettable but necessary exceptions to perfect ideals, and patching up something misshapenly overly-idealistic with caveats for this and that, thinking this will support a world view. The problem with this is that which is wrestled with as ugly is in fact beautiful — the flaw to reality — and this is being attacked or wished away, when it should be applauded and looked into for its beauties. So rather than just making peace with flaw and imperfection, and learning to accept it, then we can move even further and turn the tables, to be advocates and promoters of the beauties of flaw.
See it in Everything, Fairly
Some readers by now might wonder at the “wording difficulty” and “barrier” facing the term flaw. Detractors of flaw might associate it with the chaotic, the messy, the ugly, and the malfunctioning, which are associations that I do not use in this sense of “flaw,” though of course everything is included. It is a bit sad that there aren’t a few more words in the English language. In my idea when I think “flaw” in this article, I see it as a property imbued in everything, including the clean and new and that which excels.
Togetherness with Imperfection
When meditating, or just while philosophically considering matters while otherwise proceeding through life in a mindful manner, absolutely everything must get its credit as being part of a beautiful and admirable universe and nature. Nothing can be looked down upon in the end. Behaviors that irritate us must be made peace with. Factors in society and vocations that bother us must be readdressed and made no longer enemies. This can go against our grain, so it is not to make friends of things that truly do cause us bother, which would be to go against ourselves, but instead just a mere neutralization away from such bitter foes does the job fine, for “togetherness” with everything out there, beyond us. There is no need to become a fan of anything distasteful, but just giving it its place in reality and making some neutral peace with it is good for us.
In more challenging cases of chronic pain and suffering, the way in which such trials tend to take over an individual is to be understood and respected, and this “togetherness with imperfection” can be allowed to become somewhat distant and estranged to someone in chronic suffering, maybe left until later, for reuniting with, in cases of relief and renewal.
