In a Word...Perfection
Perfection? It's lovely in other people. Yet, even then you know it's a temporary little 'derangement'. To quote from Shakespeare's sonnet 15 : 'every thing that grows/Holds in perfection but a little moment.'
That is the natural order of things, 'all in war with time'. Like the whitethorn-strewn countryside of the west last month. Glorious, and gone! Soon it will welcome haw, the fruit of all that wild largesse.
On a personal level I've always found any ambition towards perfection to be something of a waste to time. So much effort, such little return. Then, as I explain to friends and acquaintances, 'somethings are simply beyond improvement', which they rush to interpret as they will. And they do. Oh yes, they do. My glory is to have such friends.
Human perfection is for the moment, not a living lifetime. Apart from the moment, such perfection can only be realised through the inanimate, such as stone, paint, the word; art, in other words. 'Quite useless,' as Oscar Wilde described it.
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'Art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said,' he said. The aim of art is 'simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile,' he said.
Wilde said a lot. It included expressing a preference for the artificial over the real, as the artificial held its perfection while in reality that perfection just withered and died.
Wilde went so far as to say: 'The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.' Pithy nonsense or profound truth?
The best description of a perfect man I have come across concerned one who rises at 5am, exercises, makes his bed, cleans his room, works well, does not drink, helps in the kitchen, is always on time, reads, prays daily, does not go out at night, and is in bed by 9pm. He exists, definitely. In a prison.
Preserve your flaws. They're all that's left you.
Perfection, from Latin
perfectionem,
for 'that degree of excellence which leaves nothing to be desired'.
inaword@irishtimes.com
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