Why I Don't Pursue Perfection

We know that life is not perfect. Our control is limited to the cosmos in which we create - a cosmos that attracts hammers. We adapt and readjust to whatever new desire is on our minds. When we reach one, it is on to the next. The only thing that does not change are the values we live by.

I love the example that Matthew McConaughey gives in his acceptance speech for Best Actor. A mentor ask him once, who is your hero? McConaughey did not have an answer, so he ask his friend to return in a couple weeks. After a few weeks, Matthew responded that his hero, is who he will be in 5 years. This satisfied his mentor for a time. Like all good mentors, he kept in touch, and ask the same question 5 years later. In his own Texan confidence and enthusiasm, McConaughey replied that there is no way he was his own hero now. That man is who he will be in 5 years.

Pursuing perfection as imperfect people is surely a circuitous and tiresome business. There is a nobility and courage that is required to be more tomorrow than you are today. Indeed, society rewards us accordingly for who we become. But, there is a pride and self-destruction we welcome upon ourselves for thinking we have arrived, or ever can. We invite our own demons when we do.

I believe we must pursue the unchanging, while perfecting what is changing.

What doesn't change, is that we all need to feel loved and to reciprocate that love. It is not love until there are two beings involved. What changes, is us. Everyday we are reaching, and everyday we become tired, expending energy into what matters. Our pursuit, is changing the lives of people by how fiercely we love them with what we create. The free market will decide the purity of our effort with its flaming critique. Our work is to be about creating and sharing something that will bless people, and in turn it will bless us as we grow.

There is a morality and a dignity about business.

When I say business, I do not mean an empty name or a logo that we recognize from a commercial. I mean you. Each of us is in business. You may choose to sell your time to an employer or organize people's time and effort to create your ideas. We are all in business. You are either selling yourself and your time, or you are leveraging your time and people to sell a product. What does this have to do with perfection?

The point is, you are Me Inc. You are your own corporation. The success you have in life is based on your talents, and how you apply them. People and the free market reward the quality you create. We see this everyday on Steemit. The morality and dignity of it is, you need two people to love, and you need two people to transact. People don't return to someone they don't like or trust. They don't buy advice from Bernie Madoff.

When we are pursuing perfection, we endanger our own corporation. We endanger our success. Striving after something that is not attainable only works when we know we'll never attain it. It is an understanding that life ain't about us. I'm not the center of my universe, otherwise it would be perfect. God created us to interact and share with one another in such a way, that we prosper as a whole, better than we ever could on our own. The day to day journey is not to be perfect, but to be 1% better than we were yesterday. Perhaps, we'll get close to our 5-year-self at the end.

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Image Source: Grass Trimming
Video Source: McConaughey Speech