What is perfection?

Everyone thinks they know perfection.

It’s only when you put your concept of perfection in your palm, observe it, and ask, Why do I believe this?, that you realize this one thing:

What I perceive to be perfect is only so because of my ability to make comparisons.

The best food, music, art, sensations, and experiences are perfect to us because there are qualities to them that we like, yes, but it’s by comparing them, often unconsciously, that they become perfect.

Vacationing for two weeks in Hawaii beats renewing your driver’s license at the DMV for two hours, but only because you have the capacity, knowledge, and intuition to compare the two.

Though consider this slight caveat: many people grow up on an island, like Hawaii, for the first quarter of their life, only to leave for a much larger landmass.

Why would anyone leave perfection?

Because a frame of reference is what dictates perfection, not perfection itself.

And everyone has their own frame.

I’m 80 pages into Rick Rubin’s book. He’s comparing the concepts of imperfection and perfection, where sometimes the imperfect actually gives a perfect feeling, therefore making it perfect.

So I guess why I’m writing all this is because I, and everyone else, get so caught up in trying to make things perfect when we’re only doing so because we have this ideal from God knows where that’s dictating our direction.

We try to act, write, and sing like so-and-so because they’re perfect.

But perfection is way more nuanced than we make it out to be.

Your imperfections might be someone else’s perfections, all because you two have different frames in how you view the world.

I haven’t spent much time pondering this further, or what this newfound self-awareness could help with.

Perhaps helping you stop buying shit you don’t need?

Maybe appreciating the imperfections around you?

A North Star is great.

But when do too many perfection ideals cross the line?

I don’t know,

George