I was in this phase of dearth of interesting themes to write about. And today out of the blue something finally occurred to me! Let’s see what this is going to turn into..
I dreamt..
Of an ideal, true world.
Where only goodness and happiness existed.Where only innocence and simplicity prevailed.
Where there was so much love that it lost the need to be quantified and compared.
I am always thinking along these lines. Like always!! And by the way its not funny, cause, every single day, every single moment, I am shown that its not possible.
Thinking about perfectionism and idealism, it feels like the world and the human race is hardly ready. We are not ready to face God, we are not ready to handle a perfect, ideal friendship. We do not know how to live a life where there are no problems. In fact the lack of problems, in itself, becomes a problem! Ha ha..
There are three types of perfectionists I am able to categorize, off the top of my head…
Perfectionists in principles. Nothing else matters apart from being true,honest,and living according to a set of rules (dicatated by religion, society, science, psychology and so on). It is not material if you are meeting your human requirements, like food, happiness, love, money, family, or not. All that matters, is living according to this math dictated by ancestors in the human civilization.
Perfectionists in action. All that matters is, the result. All that is important is the actual work thats accomplished. The thoughts, the plans, the dreams, are of no importance. If there is no result out of any of these, then one might as well not waste time in thinking. These are the doers who engineer the world around, who create and build, who give form to art – sometimes with a vision, but often without a vision.
Perfectionists in intellect. There is this group of people, who love theorizing more than anything. These people seek a perfect explanation or reason or justification behind everything in this world. They are extremely satisfied by the knowledge and only hunt more to explore the infinite mysteries of life around them. By the way, these people find answers not always in science, but in spirituality as well.
Seeking perfection sometimes feels like counting time. I mean, everything depends on the resolution with which you count, and what you are counting. If you are counting your age, then you decide that a year is the only logical unit. But if you counted your age in microseconds, even though possible, is not practical. If you are trying to write that perfect report, or sing that song perfectly, or plan your life in that perfect way, I think, as human beings, we can achieve any of this only by setting a standard against which we can measure perfection. And what about this standard? Full of imperfections in itself.
Sad part is, we see people who tire themselves to death, by setting such high standards for perfection, by doubting the standard all the time, and by being totally handicapped due to this very standard that they set. Nice part is, we also see people, who do not set any standards, but just execute things without knowing where it will lead them to. Of course, the result that they produce is sometimes nowhere close to perfection, but this group is simpler and happier. (Ah! Sorry.. I tried to be as non-judgemental as possible, but here I am, opinionating again.. )
Anyway, where am I going to? Yeah.. I am reiterating that perfectionism is something we are not ready to comprehend yet. Something that we will not understand or achieve. Something that we can only pursue. And something we “must” pursue.
As a compromise, we can live in this make-believe world that some things are perfect, some people are perfect, and some achievable targets of perfection are worth pursuing. After all, we gotta breathe and live in this world, dont we?
Dedicated to my father… this is his tag line for his company : “Nature has achieved perfection.. Man is still trying to. To bridge the gap is our business.”
