On Perfection
Something about the phrase, “nobody’s perfect” bothers me. The roteness with which people utter the phrase gets under my skin, yes, but what I think bugs me even more is that the phrase implies that there is a perfect out there - an ideal form, without flaw against which people can never measure up. But what does this even look like?
I’ve been called a perfectionist on a few occasions - a title I have not historically denied - but am I really a perfectionist or is there something else I’m after?
I can wrap my mind around the concept of perfection in terms of geometry. For example, I can not draw a perfect circle, not even with a compass, but I can create one in a vector graphics app on my computer. This circle is perfect, an ideal realization of a circle, in the sense that all points along the circumference of the circle are precisely equidistant from the center. If I zoom in on the vector graphic circle it remains perfect because the circle is based on a mathematical formula that helps the graphics program create perfect circles. Likewise, I can create perfect triangles, squares and so on my computer.
But something then happens if I print that circle on a sheet of paper. The printed circle becomes “imperfect” because, if I were to look at it under a magnifying glass, the fibers on the paper cause the ink to bleed and thus the perfect vector arc gives way to micro-level blotchiness. The perfect circle has to compromise with the sheet of paper. I can print out another copy of the same circle, and it will likewise be “imperfect” but different from the first print because the fibers on that sheet of paper are arranged differently causing the ink to bleed in a unique way. I can print out millions of copies of the same perfect circle and they will all be “imperfect” in different ways.
If, however, I create a digital copy of the vector graphic within the graphics program, I can create another perfect circle - and another one - and another one. But I won’t actually ever see the perfect circle, even on my computer screen, because the screen itself is, at the microscopic level, not perfecty smooth causing the graphic to refract differently at different points. The perfect circle is therefore somewhere behind the screen - wrapped in that mathematical formula that creates perfect circles.
It’s one thing to think about perfection in terms of shapes, but quite another to think of perfection in terms of people, or dogs, or trees, or mushrooms. If I were to apply the same metric to these lifeforms that I applied to computer generated circles, that would produce a pretty dystopian picture in which an ideal world would consist of identical forms. The phrase “nobody’s perfect” then is synonymous with “nobody’s an ideal unit of order within a totalitarian regime.”
I’m working on a project for and about trees. I think a lot about trees. What would the perfect tree look like within a grove of perfect trees? Would all the trees be identical to one another? Again, pretty creepy stuff. So what causes the trees to become “imperfect?” Just like the printed circle, there are external factors that impose themselves on the trees to make each one different. Wind as well as access to sunlight and nutrients are just a few external influences. In short, what makes these trees, as well as printed circles unique, or imperfect, is how they encounter resistance. Or, maybe instead of looking at things in terms of resistance, one could look at the meeting of different forces as - a conversation. For example, the mathematically perfect circle is having a conversation with the paper that results in a blotchy arc of ink and the trees are having a conversation with the surrounding elements which causes the branches on each tree to extend and twist in unique ways.
What about the idea of perfection in sports? If I bowled a 300 or batted 1.000, I would have a perfect score. Or maybe I get a perfect 10 (though this one is a little more subjective - especially if I bribe the judge). Ok, so I get a perfect score. What then? If that’s all there is to it, well, the rest is pretty anti-climatic. I can’t bat a 2.000 - not at least in this plane of existence. Thus perfection eventually becomes boring because once you reach the ideal, there’s nowhere to go. I suppose you could start working on how you would bowl that 300 or bat that 1.000 (maybe Harlem Globetrotters style) making that perfection a rest stop on the way to something else.
I looked up definitions of perfection in preparation for this blog post.
According to the often quoted Webster’s, one definition of perfection is “being entirely without fault or defect.” Cambridge Dictionary defines perfection as “complete and correct in every way, of the best possible type or without fault” while Vocabulary.com offers “complete and without defect or blemish.”
These all seem to be the definition of boring, to me. But I’m not ready to shun perfection. Back to the perfect circle example, and by extension vector graphics that create perfect shapes and gradients based on mathematical formulas. I do find something appealing about the flawless vector-created circle, below and I don’t think I’m the only one who responds positively to this type of clean graphic, which is why logos work.
I don’t think I’ll ever see a circle this perfect in nature. In keeping with the definitions above, this circle is “complete and without blemish,” especially if I am able to peek behind the computer screen to the mathematical formula that makes this circle possible.
Why do we find these types of flawless forms appealing? Is it because they provide a sense of stability, a predictability and a sense that there is a ceiling (or floor) to an ideal? If I can define perfection by the above circle, I can by extension define reality. It’s not “turtles all the way down” because this type of perfection is finite. But again, after the perfect 10 or the realization of an ideal, what then? Is that the end of the road?
I’ve always been interested in what’s around the bend of that hypothetical road (which is why I sometimes pushed myself to exhaustion and dehydration in my younger cycling days) - not wanting the adventure to end. Perfectionism, on the other hand, gets tied up in an imagined ideal that’s the rest stop on the way to somewhere much more mysterious. And that beyond - I think is where art happens . . . and trees happen and dogs and mushrooms happen.
There’s a line from the film, Parasite, “It’s easy to be nice when you’re rich,” which I take to mean that, when you can pay your way out of those things in life that cause resistance, it’s easy to be equanimous. I remember when I was a young adult, before the challenges of, say, having to sink thousands of dollars into house repairs and having to consider others as well as myself in major life decisions - all while dealing with a demanding job, it was easy to be calm. I was on one occasion compared by my housemates as a “zen monk.” It was easy to be nice because I was young and without many responsibilities. As I get older, I feel my body increasingly “having a conversation” with external forces and getting a bit more weathered as the years pass. This occasionally makes me more of a grumpy old man and I can tell you that sometimes I can be a perfect asshole.
I appreciated this earlier life free of resistance, but I also sometimes would think, there’s no suffering worse than the unfelt suffering of cluelessness. I knew I wasn’t a zen monk back in those days. The perfect circle behind the screen was able to remain “perfect,” because it hadn’t encountered much resistance.
Recently, we went down to South Carolina to film driftwood trees on a beach. These driftwood, or boneyard, beaches are a relatively uncommon phenomena as far as I know and are the result of the coastal waters encroaching on maritime forests or stands of trees. The trees have since died because of the salt water intrusion and only the skeletons remain. In a sense, the trees have stopped “having a conversation” with the elements in that they no longer converse with the environment by twisting their branches in a particular way to benefit from the elements. I suppose these trees are more in the position of being listeners - simply adapting to weather events of all kinds, without having to interject.
As the trees rest along the beach, the ocean and other elements smooth out the rough edges. Though not dead, I feel that as I start to get older, my rough edges are getting smoothed out, too and I’d like to think I have less of a need to talk and enjoy listening more (others might disagree). This smoothness brings me back to the perfectly smooth vector graphic circle. Are the driftwood trees becoming more perfect by having all their rough parts smoothed out? Eventually, the tree will be smoothed into non-existence. Is the tree ultimately perfect then? Of course, the tree never really goes into a state of non-existence. Sure, as that particular tree it will, but its component elements are merely digested in various ways by other forms.
Maybe that non-existent tree is perfect but its perfection can only exist in some other realm. But I would also add that this perfection is still a rest stop along the way to something due to the fact that the tree also becomes a vast array of different organisms as it breaks down - or rather is broken down. Perhaps then, true perfection exists in some hyper-dimensional state where the conversation needs the smoothness as much as the smoothness needs the conversation and like the circumference of our circle, there is never an end point.
