The Perfect Human

When I was young, I pondered a lot about being the perfect human. What would make someone perfect? What is the meaning of perfect? And as a human, what does perfect means?

I used to think that the perfect human is someone who has it all: kind heart, successful job, have a lot of achievements, loving and being loved, live a happy life and easy.

But as I grow older, I can find that the over-achiever people whom I thought were perfect, were not always the nicest people. and I saw that even being a nice person doesn’t mean that they never have done a mistake or do bad things.

As my view of the world progressed, I learn this thing, that one stereotype of character does not always equal the following characters that it sometimes embedded with.

For example: the phrase “an honest person” does not always equals “a good person”. Although honesty is considered a good deed, being honest does not always necessarily means good. Let’s see if they are put in different contexts.

1. A girl was being honest that she doesn’t cheat on her exam.

2. The boy was being honest that he doesn’t like the shoes that his father bought him with the last penny his father has as a sign of love.

On the first example, we see how we can associate honesty with goodness. But there are also circumstances where one thing does not directly equals the other. On the second example, we might judge that the boy is honest, but honestly mean, because he would break his father’s heart if he actually told him that he does not like the shoes. it would be as if he does not appreciate his father’s effort. Therefore, in the second example, honesty would be associated with cruelty.

As I notice this, I realize that there is always more than is seem to everything. Especially in humans, the good and bad is like a dance inside of us. Every one has both sides. Only, it is more to do with the percentages of good and bad deeds that the person does in life that shows which end he/she is perceived by the world. For example, a teacher who patiently teaches her class of rebellious children might be perceived as a good teacher by the school. And when she does not give up on their student’s dream, she does more good deeds, and perceived also as a good person by the parents. But if the teacher apparently abandons her family in order to work on the students and have no time for her own family, then she would be perceived as a bad wife.

However, there are no real parameters for judging a person’s good or bad personality.

And that was my conclusion for the Perfect Human at the time.

UTOPIA

When I got into college, there has been topic of discussion about Utopia. In architecture, the Utopian World refers to the Modern Era when there were propagandas everywhere about building the perfect city for a perfect living.

However, the Modern Era with the ideology of finding The Perfect City collapsed, along with the demolition of Pruitt Igoe that has symbolizes the perfect Modernism Idea.

What the Utopian misses that can be seen from the Modernism Era is that the fact that there is no such thing as perfect itself (if not talking about the bigger context of the universe). The idea of building the Perfect City with a certain criteria, like it or not, will always have consequences. Creating something with the idea of it being perfect means neglecting the possibility that something might go wrong.

How ever, what we could learn from this era is that how the idea of Utopia has provoked people to dream about a place or time in the future where everything is better. It has never been about the physical result. It has been about the living idea to always hoping and working to make something better than the one before.

So, thinking about the Perfect Human, I finally understand that it’s not the actual perfect human that matters. It is the spirit to always looking forward to something better, to be something better than the one before.

And this is how I like seeing myself. It’s about emotional growth. There is always something I can learn about. Overtime, as I see myself tacking one problem after the other, it’s never about where I am compared to other people, because that is a completely different journey. But the one I have to compare myself with is the person I was yesterday.