Paradox of Perfection

When I die, I will have lived the perfect life. This has been my claim for decades. What I mean by it is that once the last breath is taken in this body, the life will be concluded, no one else will ever have lived the life I did. In that way, it is the precisely unique and undo-overable, complete life that can forever be only as it is (or was, in this case). Perfection is like a snowflake (made from spring water or acid rain), like a sunset (brilliant from pollution’s haze or cumulus nimbi). To me, perfection has not meant the quality of flawlessness or at the apex of a scale of comparison. Perhaps the only thing imperfect about a thing or event is the thinking about it and the memories of it once passed.

But what of the horrendous events? Being raped, robbed, medically damaged by a surgical mishap, abused by a parent, lied to by a lover? How could any of these things be perfect?

The word “perfect” comes from the Latin per, meaning through, and facere, meaning to do. Perfect means through the doing. Done. Complete. Finished. Having come to a state of possessing all of its parts. If I am to experience abuse, I anticipate the perfection of it, then it has become fully what it is to be and will no longer be in the present. I have only to contend with the remnants of it in my psyche and memory and the ways these influence my view of the present. Ah, confusion thus is born.

How does a thing, tragic or joyous, continue once concluded? How does it miss its perfection by lingering in consciousness? To what extent is this mental continuation a part of reality? In what ways do memories and grasping change the current moment from being as it is and perfect once ended into a perpetuation of something else?

Perfection is an invitation to our awareness. Allowing perfection is, perhaps, to be finished with the influence of a past event. Rather than identifying oneself by it or by clinging to it through fears or by trying to replicate its pleasure or avoiding its pain, experience can be a non-painful and non-coloring source of information in the mind. Memory need not misshape the moment from being anything other than as it is.

So, how can one be empowered? An event, while unfolding, is not yet perfect. Thus, to co-write a happening, we can surely access our thoughts to cultivate awareness of what is occurring. We must do that or be forever relearning how to cross the road and eat with a fork. But it is also possible to be detached from identifying that knowledge as the Self while in the midst of fending off a terrorist or protecting a young one from harm.

To be present is to be clear minded, uninfluenced but informed by previous experience. This is where we can be free of our projections onto our self and onto others. This is where we can realize that a situation is full of possibilities until it is concluded. This is a way to hop off that wheel of karma and scorch some of the sprouting seeds. There is liberation in this.

Being aware while a loved one dies, during a violent physical attack, careening in a car towards a tree, witnessing the first fumbling steps of a child, making love with your partner, having a cheese sandwich, waking up late for work, finding a twenty dollar bill, forgetting where your keys are, finding the perfect gift for a friend, sitting under a tree, composing a song, rubbing ointment on an aching knee, living through extraordinary and ordinary moments is the opportunity to participate fully in your life becoming the perfection it will one day be. One has but to look through clear mind, educated but unmesmerized by it.