“Only in Our Limits Do We Find Our Freedom”

A Slave to Perfection

    Letting go of the Rulebook is disquieting, but it also is the source of human free will.  Here’s how that works:  If we are perfectible, then the only moral path is towards perfection.  What is the moral thing to do if we are perfectible?  The only moral rightness is to pursue perfection.  To do anything less is to be immoral, to be sinful.  This is why fundamentalists can so easily condemn those who don’t believe in their Book; they are obviously sinners.  It is also why so many fundamentalists seem comfortable with killing those who stand against the Path.  They are keeping us all from perfection! 
    The price of certitude is slavery to the path.  If you are perfect, you must perfect.  Nothing else is allowed.  If we are perfectible, we are all slaves to that belief.
    If we let go of the notion of perfectibility, what are we left with?  We are no longer bound to perfection.  Oddly, this acceptance of our imperfectibility turns out to be a source of power.  Only by accepting our finitude, our inability to lead a perfect life, are we free to judge how to lead a Good life.  When we reject perfectibility, we reject the slavery that goes with it.  We become free to decide what is Good.
    An example.  If you are like me, you spend your day on a dozen different chores and projects.  On any given day, the number of things that I have to accomplish is much greater than the time I have to accomplish them.  But so, too, with my entire life.  In any given life, we are called upon to accomplish more Good than any of us, even Mother Theresa, the Pope and the Dalai Lama, are capable of accomplishing.  There is always more Good to be done than the resources available to doing Good. 
    If I were a perfectionist, then how would I judge each day or my entire life, as I fell further and further behind on the Good work I am called upon to produce?  I would have to judge myself as a failure, since I never managed to achieve the promise of perfectibility. 

“Only in Our Limits Do We Find Our Freedom”

    If you let go of perfectibility, you are able to reclaim your moral worth.  That you did not accomplish everything you were called upon to accomplish is predictable.  This is an inevitable part of the human condition.  If I can’t do all that I have on my “things to do list,” then I can decide which “things” are most pressing, which things I “ought” to do.  When I can not accomplish everything, I have the choice as to what ends I will pursue.
    But there is more.  As a perfectionist, each day is a marker of my increasing sinfulness.  (I wonder if this daily growing awareness of one’s failings, one’s sinfulness, makes it easier for  a fundamentalist to commit violent suicide in order to achieve the Perfect End.  At least it ends the failure.) 
    But if I am inevitably finite, then each day provides me a new opportunity to choose that which I consider worthy of spending my day to accomplish.  Each day is a challenge, but it is also a fresh chance to live my moral values, to enact my priorities. 
    If we are able to let go, even for a moment, of our need for certitude, we will actually find strength in this new place.  I usually try to capture this in a seemingly ironic statement: “Only in our limits do we find our freedom.”  Only when we accept our imperfectibility do we find a place in our lives for making choices.  No longer a slave to perfection, we are free to choose.
    This is the existential moment.  This is the moment when we realize that we are inevitably limited, that our aspirations, our very lives, are finite.  And we accept the pressure that this puts on “meaning.”  Because, at this existential moment, we must inevitably, ask, “If my life isn’t perfectible, can it still have meaning?  If I can’t lead a perfect life, can I still lead a Good life?  And if so, how do I know this?”  If life isn’t perfectible, then we are going to have to look elsewhere for meaning, and we are going to have to accept our freedom in doing so.