Perfection, Not A Fan
45
True perfection seems imperfect,
yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty,
yet it is fully present.
True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
I am no advocate for “perfection.” No doubt perfection is the mind’s fixation on the infinite in one abstract form or another. The term is used a lot. We are addicted to perfection. We strive, drive ourselves to achieving this coveted point of closure. Closure, the end of the line, a finish line that “finishes” the participant… A grand finale, the unsurpassable apex of being! That is, – “alleged”!
How could such a condition possibly be real, have any purchase, or connection with this world, – the only world of which you and I are constituents? No chance at all! A few moments of thought are sufficient, the understanding arrives that everything which I admire, beauty and meaning notwithstanding – manifests some flaw, some degree of “the unfinished.”
With further thought I also understand the incomplete is space enough to allow for what may or may not happen today. Always there’s the surprising and exciting emergence, the punctuation of something new, vital energy resulting in something to come, to be born. Some examples of this flow, this imperfect-of-things at the racetrack…
~*~
A walk down the staging lanes is exciting, to observe cars up-close, drivers seated, waiting patiently for a call to move forward to stage the car for the next quarter mile pass. When I asked a driver told me this was the most quiet time of his day, when he had time enough to think, alone with himself and the car. Each race car is singular, a unique construction, the combining of chassis fabrication with an engine to the intent – principles of physics are utilized for a faster and faster acceleration, a standing start to 1,320 feet, the quarter mile. The contest is primarily that of a driver/crew edging towards a more efficient interface between track surface and the race car. A competitor in the adjacent lane is secondary to the conundrum of tuning one’s engine and chassis to gain just one more tenth of a second…
Stroll with me between the waiting race cars in the staging lanes. The variety is exuberant, delicious, to express and to shape events, allowing track conditions, engine tune, chassis setup, and driver skill to speak for itself…
2 thoughts on “Perfection, Not A Fan”
In the realm of a deterministic world, the word “perfection” is both meaningless and all encompassing at the same moment since everything, every blink, every breath, every gust of wind is as it should be and therefore perfect. The problem arises that if everything is perfect, nothing is perfect. For perfection to exist, in the sense we have defined its meaning within our limited language capabilities, we must also have imperfection. The yin and yang of existence, of anything and everything. Light cannot be defined without the dark, just as perfection cannot be defined without its opposite. But because determinism is based on the notion of a preset universe, everything we do is the best it can possibly be, hence perfect within that context.
Like so many of our words that we imbue with a definitive meaning, i.e. truth, understanding, love, etc., we are fooling ourselves into believing there is a universal understanding, a specific definition honed by a kind of cooperative standard, formulated by some unknown and unknowable entity. This is not possible in the current iteration of the human mind. We are WAY too subjective to be able to come to a mutual agreement.
And so we will continue to use the word “perfection” regardless of its viability and hold it up as a false standard by which we can judge the performance of our fellow creatures. To me, at least, this is just how it works.
Language is a necessary means, without which our communication would be monosyllabic gestures. Language is a nod in the direction of meaning. How easily we become seduced, beguiled to believe we’ve capture “truth”… At best we have part of the story, which we can offer, and if we’ve fortunate others will indicate, yes, we see it too.