Seeking perfection?
I was listening to a podcast with two guys talking about a mutual acquaintance named Justin, who travelled to India and went missing. He’s never been found. The exact details surrounding his disappearance remain a mystery, but they suspect he died in a very remote region of the country, presumably seeking spiritual fulfilment or to fill some other void in his life.
The podcast guest wrote a book about Justin, and described him as someone who was always seeking perfection. Reflecting on this sort of behaviour, I had the thought, “If you’re seeking perfection, then you’re not yet content. So if seeking perfection is a feature of your personality, does it mean you’re in the cohort of people most unlikely to find it?” Someone who’s lived a long enough life and has enough common sense can see that things always change, and if they’re perfect in one moment they’re never going to stay that way.
Justin, like so many of his generation, was partially a product of social media. He was popular, good looking, and a lot of his life was spent trying to please others on Instagram or other platforms. I think a lot of people are born into a life where the virtual space is the only space in which they engage or find fulfilment, and ultimately this guy’s story was one about needing and trying to find intimacy. Maybe everything he wanted to do in pursuit of perfection was done in an attempt to fill that void. I wondered “Can you ever find fulfilment if that’s the only thing you’re seeking?”
The closest approximation to perfection is defined in my mind — not completely, but at least in part — by accepting the impermanent nature of all things, enough to stop trying to bend and mould the unending force of change to meet a particular end; to be able to notice and diffuse negative thoughts that arise out of wanting things to be different.
It can’t be easy to just get out of your own way when you’re on a search for meaning, or a quest to uncover and respond to past traumas, nor does it stop advocates of these methods from endlessly indulging in them while simultaneously claiming to have attained enlightenment.
Notwithstanding this fact, everyone, in a sense, is on a quest of learning and growing and having a journey, but this feeling of needing to be perfect — whether it’s culturally ingrained or pressure handed down from family, religion, or whatever else — it all stems from a feeling of missing something, and when it’s found — if people are lucky enough to find it — often seems like something that was always available and accessible; a change in perspective in such a way as to invite more people into your life and share and spread your love. That is what inspires others, it makes people feel safe, it connects with our authentic nature.
The ways in which we groom our society to move towards those ends and encourage those goals point us to the values we should be celebrating. It involves treating people in a way that allows them to feel validated just by being in our presence, rather than how many comments or likes or shares they get on social media. What are your thoughts? Do you think your culture sends the wrong messages, and what messages should we be teaching and sharing?
