Perfect…They Are All Perfect: Why Perfection is A Fool’s Errand
Perfection is a fallacy, and living with aims to it contradicts human nature.
Title inspired by Katsumoto — The Last Samurai
Perfection
Perfection is a disease — it is not a positive ideal.
I think the worst type of pursuit is:
Internal perfection.
It is a fool’s dream, it does not exist, nor can it be attained.
I can contend with an architect who is a perfectionist:
Thanks for the great art!
Options — Perfection
I will legitimately summarize the two options everyone has if they are seeking internal perfection:
- Give-up
- Embrace Asceticism
Otherwise, prepare for a life of discomfort, anxiety, loneliness, and depression.
Give-up
Perfection in character and treatment of others contradicts your fallibility as a human being.
We all have emotions, desires, character, ambition..etc.. and the combination of those elements makes us:
Who we are, how we think, what we think and what we want.
Seeking internal perfection is making sure all that is acting according to a perfect standard, and it gets better, all the time.
But no wait, it gets even better, the standard that we judge ourselves against is probably not perfect:
Who has a perfect standard on how things should work and be?
Embrace Asceticism
Seriously, this is your best shot at accomplishing something impossible, but at least:
You will get the closest you can get.
Asceticism works by discarding you from everything in this world, relationships, material, and sensual pleasures while training you to control your emotions.
I am not an expert in this field, but I’ve come across it as a path proposed by some philosophers.
The argument I present is the solitude and lack of distraction this route provides may be the perfect setting to pursue internal perfection.
Imperfection
It is accepting that we are flawed, that we may be wrong and we may be right sometimes.
It is realizing that life is in the grey and that when we judge, hypocrisy runs in our veins:
It is okay to be human.
The world is not perfect, and I don’t believe it is designed to be perfect:
That would be quite boring.
Growth & Conclusion
It's perfectly fine if we want to grow as people and mature into better people, but we will never be perfect.
I write this after having experienced a terrible time seeking perfection of character for over 5 years.
I hope you learn something from my experience and stay imperfect.
