Imperfection lets us appreciate perfection

This thought struck me when I stood in front of a lush green lawn, fresh after a morning rain. My friend commented that It was the greenest grass he had ever seen. That thought kept bugging me until I comprehended a very important human notion of comparison. We love to compare objects and their traits. When we say how blue the sky is, we are implicitly comparing it with a mental image of the bluest sky we remember seeing.

We say how beautiful she looks..or how cute the baby looks! They all imply comparison albeit done implicitly and unconsciously. Although we sometimes pay them compliments to conform with the appropriate societal forms and requirements, it still incites us to compare this situation with a familiar one in the past or with an ideal situation we have in our utopian imagination.

But within all this lies the fundamental weakness of our being imperfect and our inability to make judgements without comparison. The goodness of an object in every sense should not be the result of a comparison but an appreciation of the object's own intrinsic beauty and value. It should not be the byproduct of a skewed comparison between two situations which we perceive to be fundamentally alike.

Another very important issue that could be raised here is that if everything were perfect, then we would all be good and no-one will be better and none the best. We would all be spitting images of God himself and we would all be the same in every sense. It is the small imperfections and shortcomings in us that makes us all different. Unbelievably, it is the small quirk in the mouth, or the twitchy jawline that makes us imperfect, which in turn allows in all to appreciate perfection when we see it. Some appreciate the perfection, some covet it, others desire it, but only some truly have it. But what very few might have is the ability to see others perfection and appreciate it, without belittling others or even themselves. We appreciate beauty at the cost of considering ourselves imperfect which in itself is a crime against your own conscience, but it is the cost we pay for comparing others with our own sense of perfection.

Perfect is not a idea, it is neither a goal, it is simply a state of mind.