Striving for perfection is wildly imperfect

Religions would have us strive for perfection. But as this essay points out, that would mean a death of sorts: no progressing, no changing.

None of us is perfect. The question is, why would we want to be? (And a more basic one, how could we ever know what perfection consists of?)

I got to thinking about this after an intuitive Aha! popped into my consciousness recently.

Some undone "to-do's" had been brought to my attention by my wife. She'd reminded me that I hadn't yet attended to some tasks that would benefit other people, yet I kept putting off.

I started to ponder my failure to do what I should have been doing. Then an inner voice interrupted my pondering:

What's right with trying to do everything right all of the time? And what's wrong with doing things other people consider to be wrong? Imperfection needs to be embraced, not shunned.

Right away I felt a lot better, like a weight had been lifted from my psyche that I'd been carrying around for too long.

My wife often says that I don't worry enough. But inside my head, I know that I worry a lot, often about ridiculous things. And this isn't the first time that I've had an insight into what I called "the sweet taste of imperfection" in another blog post.

It takes a while, I guess, to let go of the whole be ye perfect thing -- which was a big part of the spiritual/mystical teachings that I followed for over thirty-five years.

Books would talk about the evils of the "five deadly sins." Lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism. Well, jeez, take away those qualities and what is left? Not much that is recognizably human, or authentic.

The moment I honestly recognized that sometimes I simply don't care about other people; that often I'd rather put my own needs/desires first; that I can be a selfish, inconsiderate, egotistical S.O.B; and that I'm really not bothered about all this being true, I felt a warm glow of imperfection wash over me.

I'm not sure to what extent religiosity is related to peoples' discomfort with imperfection. I suspect quite a bit. Maybe, a lot.

If we accepted our seeming human failings, quirks, eccentricities, faults, weaknesses, and such as part of what it means to be a normal Homo sapiens, rather than as problems to be solved by some sort of divine Fix-It power, would religions be as attractive?

I say, "no." If you think I'm wrong, an idiot, a fool, and/or a completely misguided philosophical klutz, that's great. Thanks for adding to my warm glow of imperfection.

Comments

[Dogribb]

I over heard a elderly man tell a young girl(possibly a relative) to stop climbing through the security alarm stands at a local bookstore.
She was treating them as if they were monkey bars..."Thats not for that"... he said .For him it was, for her hardley and for me I was struck by the how certainty about anything is simply a notion.Perfect/imperfect the dualists conundrum

[Suzanne Foxton]

It's a heck of a lot easier to just redefine perfection. Life as it is, for instance. With a soupçon of existentialism.

[Dogribb]

Yes Suz..its the Love of that,that eludes my understanding

[Suzanne]

Thank goodness it's not necessary to understand it! But fun to try.