Powerful definitions: Perfect

One of the most powerful words we use today is the word perfect. Today, our world bombards us with depictions of the perfect body, the perfect look, the perfect trip, etc. In some way or another, we are all striving for perfection, but what are we thinking of when striving towards this goal?

The current dictionary defines perfect as a state without blemish, and indeed this is what we see in the world.

If we go back to the Greeks, however, and their definition of perfect, they saw perfection from three different angles.

1. that which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

Are we acknowledging all parts of ourselves, the good and the bad? For example, I am terrible at cooking. There is nothing wrong with not being good at cooking, and I could spend time on this skill If I wanted to. If we do not acknowledge our or other's flaws and difficulties we do not see the whole person

2. that which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

Making no mistakes or blemishes (our society loves this one even though it is impossible to make zero mistakes)

3. which has attained "serving" its purpose.

I try to focus on the third definition with all the individuals I work with:

I want to spend most of the time on the third aspect of being perfect that we often overlook; Serving its purpose.

For example, the purpose of a spoon is to transfer food into one's mouth. We could look at the spoon's aesthetic and see that it is bent or crooked and disregard it as broken, or we could acknowledge the fact that it's a perfect spoon because it still gets our favorite foods into our mouths.

A spoon's purpose doesn't necessarily quantify the amount of food it gets to our mouths. A spoon that gets a little food into our bellies is just as perfect as the spoon that holds an entire piece of cake.

In this way, the perfect student is the one that goes to school when they can, regardless of grades, because the purpose of a student is to learn.

A perfect body allows you to live a life. I often remind myself that the purpose of my body is not to play sports or run 5k. It's simply to be able to maneuver through the world in the safest way possible.

I often muse about the idea that our world would change so much if the definition of perfect included all its parts instead of the part that teaches us the need to be stainless.