Perfect?

 

Life is such an interesting concept, it can be cruel and it can be worthless. Or it can be favorable and rewarding. Life is something people for years and years have been trying to explain, trying to perfect and trying to enhance. I’m sure somewhere along the lines we might get the over all idea of why humanity is so imperceptible to change, we might even understand why life is so difficult for us to accept that we cannot alter it to our own view of perfect.

 

Now, that is my main point in this little spiel: Perfect. Even the word screams “come, I dare you to challenge me”! Well, I’m going to. What is perfect? Is it a matter of our own imagination that we believe something is so perfect it is impossible to, dare I say it? change? Or is it something more controversial; something like a view that only God may understand? Is humankind so limited in our understanding to speak of something as Perfect?

 

Well, in the view of most people perfect is the epitome of something we don’t need to change, it is something no one understands. Why? Well, the answer is rather simple… We are not able to comprehend perfection. We are unable to give life a sense of perfect, we may have good lives even great ones, but perfect isn’t something we can archive. No, this isn’t going to be a religious spiel or a talk about being imperfect that you should just not try, this is to make you more aware of what we perceive as Perfect.

 

Religious people believe we cannot understand it because we are not God. That only God is perfect and only he may know the truth about perfection. Humans are made in God’s image, this is what we are taught from the time we start going to Tiny Tots Bible Study to the time our eulogy is read after we die. “Made in his image”, how very strange, but we are also told humans are imperfect and God IS perfect. Does that make any sense? Of course it does! We were made in His image not we were made to BE God. There is a very fine line between being created as something and just…being.

 

Now we get into atheism, yeah, even believing in nothing has its own religious title. Most atheists can agree with the people of the church on this ONE issue. Humans are not perfect. Sure some of us can be “saint-like” but that doesn’t mean we have no transgressions. It just means those people worked harder to not live with those faults for the rest of eternity. There is a collection of words from a man named Dante, The Divine Comedy; it is about his time in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. He talks about the toils of humanity and the punishments in Hell for those who aren’t as “perfect” as God has commanded. Now, I’m not going to argue religion with a dead man but I can’t remember God ever telling us to be perfect. Sure he said “be like God” he didn’t say “be God”.

 

So atheists and people of the belief in a higher power both agree we cannot achieve perfection because we are human, because we are mortal. They didn’t say anything about being able to try and be the best you can, okay, this is sounding like a pep talk. Anyhow. All I’m trying to get across is life isn’t perfect and we aren’t even able to comprehend the meaning of the word.

 

We are just as we are: mortal and flawed.

Reviews

[Mioki]

Beautiful write. This really raises questions in one's self, that aren't usually raised. They are of the kind that don't want to be thought, but have to. We use the word perfect in our daily lives, but do we really know what it means? Your write shows us that we don't even scratch the surface in the context we use 'perfect'. For example, when I lover says, "Darling, your simply perfect" what I really saying? Are we saying that, to us, that person is like god? Without flaws, or are we saying that we can handle the flaws because everything else about them we love. But wouldn't that make them imperfect, and yet still loveable?

I like how this truly makes a person think. Your write tells of how imperfect we all are, and our concept of perfect varies. It's wonderfull how you don't say who's right or wrong, but that you explore everyone's beliefs and let the reader figure it out for themselves. As you put, "life isn't perfect and we aren't even able to comprehend the meaning of the word." We really don't have any idea.

This write is really an eye opener, thank you for posting it. The idea of perfection will continue to fill my thoughts, now that this has made me face it.