Perfection, How boring

This is a continuation of the last entry where I was shattered to the core to find out the group of people that I erstwhile imagined were perfect proved otherwise.

I arrived at the conclusion that pastors and religious men are human after all, just like me. Now you may wonder how I came to this conclusion and the answer is, that I didn’t come to this conclusion in one sitting. Many things explicitly and implicitly contributed to this end. Things that helped me come to this conclusion ranged from hearing firsthand leaders explicitly declaring their humanity verbally on the pulpit to hearing the very human and sometimes criminal things for which some leaders have been capable and responsible. In short I couldn’t have come to this conclusion if I hadn’t chosen to live. As I mentioned in the entry on Death and Dying, sometimes we come up against many and multiple things that seem to make death a better alternative than life but choosing life as foolish as it may seem always becomes the wiser thing to do. I have come up against many of such instances but choosing to live was in realizing that Perfection no matter how desirable is really boring.

When people say, “I’m not perfect, but I’m striving to be” I crack a smile inside and wonder, will you ever be or better still, do you ever want to be? Of course the idea of being perfect is desirable but I imagine it would be so boring because you would know the outcome of every endeavor and what is the fun in that, what is the thrill in knowing that it will all turn out perfect. I may seem weird saying this, but failure is sometimes necessary I think. Disagree with me if you may but even though I don’t think of failure is a good motivation, I can’t honestly count the number of people who have vehemently declared it as what they fear the most. The perfect man is a lonely man who no one will have to worry about. I have had a taste of the lonely pill and it’s not a sweet one. When you are left alone because everyone automatically assumes you will be all right without knowing how, your weight becomes many times heavier. And even though things have always kind of worked out in the end, the process and burden of grinding out the details on your own can leave a bitter taste in your mouth if you are not careful. The taste can have an effect of heightening your desire to be perfect but then the only way is to live and that is to know that perfection no matter how desirable is really boring.

So then we should all realize this and go on and live our lives right? Wrong. Even though I may dismiss the idea of striving for perfection as somewhat stressful there is no denying that it is an innate human desire that I daresay everyone can’t live without. However, if even the pastor is not perfect then what hope is there for any of us? This is an important question every single soul and human life and mind should ponder because that desire to be perfect is not going anywhere. It is here that I draw my line for the need for something else, someone else as it were to do the perfecting. Here I see the need for salvation and the need for something beyond me. That’s when the idea of someone beyond me makes sense. So let me see if I can wrap this up. I am not perfect and will never be, I have an innate desire to be perfect and it endlessly frustrates me to see that I fail and I’m not and finally because of all of this, the idea of someone who is perfect makes sense. As selfish as it seems even though I have no clear imagination of what perfection is or what the perfect man looks like I am convinced I would rather have this other person be perfect and never me.