Perfection

"Can strife for perfection be a weakness?" - Interviewing Panel, IIM Ahmedabad

This niggling thought had me pre-occupied long after that fateful interview was over. The quality of ominous prophecy that the question brought dawned upon me a little after I could have made an impact on the answer. But, the scope of this matter was far beyond the one interview in which they expressed their intrigue at a seemingly innocuous statement made by me.

To identify the reach of this on one's life, I'll begin by considering how it can affect one's life. Perfection is the state achieved when nothing wrong or unintended occurs with respect to some preconceived ideal scenarios for that state. In other words, an unsurpassable degree of excellence. As far as the latter defintion goes, it is highly improbable to acheive as the word 'unsurpassable' is governed by the rules of relativity. Going by layman terms, perfection is a state that is often misused in an attempt to sound exaggerated or overly-intuitive.

When a person speaks of perfection in relation to her life, work or relationships, she tries to benchmark it with a mental image which she has. This means that she is comparing her present situation to one in her mind. The fallacy with this occurs from the fact that what one yearns for is constantly changing and being upgraded by one's mind. Even a person at the pinnacle of his's field such as Valentino Rossi at motorcycling would still not consider himself perfect even if his current state would have surpassed his dreams of a few years ago. He would have set higher targets for himself in the process of reaching his current state and perfection for him could mean winning every single race in the calender. He might not be satisfied with winning every category of motorcycling races on any manufacturer's vehicle because of his mastery over them.

The essential point here is that perfection is a dynamic state of flawlessness which keeps getting altered to a higher level for most individuals. Another facet to consider is the process of achieving flawlessness or supreme excellence. For a person to be free from flaws in his life is impossible. There cannot exist a person who has no faults or flaws. At the worst case, being fault-less is in itself a fault. Thus, the anamoly lies in the matter that perfection in itself is a bird, which one pursues during one's entire life and still cant catch.

That itself poses a new threat to the above conclusion. If everyone realises that perfection is impossible to achive, then why go after it at all. Why not realise the truth about one's probable aspirations and junk the rest into oblivion. Then, the tag of perfection would be allotted to another goal, which may be difficult to attain. Thus contradicting this theory, anything that has a state of surpassable excellence is not perfect.

On a personal level, perfection is something I pursue to a large extent in my life, work and relationships. Since I'm a high stakes player, the world is reduced to black or white- all or nothing. The part where I do not accept grey poses a hindrance as failure is something I WILL not accept and perfection IS not achievable. Therein lies the guarentee for a lot more sleepless nights in which perfection proves to be a dream I have to achive. But there are levels of perfection I can live with. Understanding the problem of black and white, I have found solace in being happy with the multiple shades in black as opposed to a far derogatory white.

In work and relationships, one always wishes to be rewarded with the ultimate distinction of achieving perfection for a task for which one has shown an exemplary level of committment. But, these are the accolades which one wants to achieve because of one's influences, be it society, television or literature. But society, television and literature themselves loath in the satisfaction that there are people who believe that that is the only state that is worth looking at. The day one realises that these are the common beliefs that one had rather stay away from, the sooner they can live a life worth only by their own standards.

I aim to live a life which is free from societal benchmarks and pressures and which I'm satisfied living. One that is worth fighting for, one that is worth dying for. That for me, is PERFECTION.