Suanne is a dogged doodler, inveterate word-player, and experimental baker. An accidental Business student (bizwords.tumblr.com) with origins in English Literature, she has had the dubious privilege of toting Shakespeare into Finance class. She blogs occasionally and abstractedly at thickrett.tumblr.com.
Suanne Chan
Coming home one Saturday afternoon, Mynah saw the old man with the white beard. He was standing next to the vegetable plot. His cotton-white beard jutted awkwardly forward out of a round face, and his balding head glowed in the sun. He was rooting awkwardly among the potatoes. What was he looking for?
Mynah tiptoed over and peered over his shoulder. Sun-spotted, his hands were covered with gray dust from the potatoes as he examined each one. Out of the corner of one eye he spotted Mynah and nodded.
“This one has an eye sprouting,” he said, by way of conversation, tossing a potato into a pail. “And this one… this one looks green.”
“They all look the same to me,” said Mynah. “Maybe some are just older or rounder or lumpier than others.”
“Oh but they are different, they all are,” he replied. “I’ve been searching all my life for the perfect potato. It should be regularly shaped. Clear skin, no blemishes or scars. Unbruised and new and earthy.”
“And what will happen when you find one?” A pause.
“I guess I’ll die happy.”
I’ve been thinking about perfection a lot lately. I read somewhere once that there are two kinds of people in this world: the satisficers, and the maximisers. Satisficers work towards satisfying the needs of the job at hand, while Maximisers tend to work towards perfection. Our attitudes towards the ideal standard have implications for everything in life, from design, to ethics, to relationships.
So what is ideal? For the purposes of this post, I’m going to place the to-be-or-not-to-be-perfect dilemma within two contexts: nature, and Christmas. Let’s start with nature: in my pseudo-fable I was thinking about picking fruit or vegetables at the market. There is always that tension between finding something perfect, and something acceptable. In these days of agricultural sophistication, anything too perfect can also be suspect. (The picture-perfect peach you’re holding was probably sprayed with pesticides.) If we really think about ideals of beauty, most of us would probably cite nature as the golden standard. There is liberty inscribed into each toss of branches, each sliver of sea, even that droop of mangroves. There’s always an inspired quality to nature that makes me pick up a shell or flower or leaf and want to take it home. A wild abandon that is not lost because this petal is more ruffled or that leaf more tilted than its companion. Sometimes, looking at nature I am reminded that God never meant for us to compare ourselves with our own kind. Just before Jesus died the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was greater. “The greatest among you,” he said, “must be the servant of all.” For the quality of a thing is not in what it is, but in what it was made to do. And in the act of dying a fruit brings forth—well, fruit.
And then there is the incarnation. What does it mean that a thing could take on a new quality, become something else? I’m sure that plastic surgeons and makeup artists have their take on this. But Christmas tells us that what is ideal is not just the perfection of something put on, but also the rawness and vulnerability of something taken off. A God putting on flesh, but a God stripped of the power to save himself from torture, and mockery, and death.
And something more: like the old man in my story, Simon in the gospel of Luke saw in Jesus the perfection he’d been waiting for all his life—“Now I can die happy” he said (Luke 2). Was Jesus perfect the way you and I tend to think? By no means. But well, the Bible talks about him as a branch, a plant. Not even a particularly attractive plant.
He wasn’t well-connected. His friends were fishermen, tax collectors (think traffic police/carpark attendants), ex-prostitutes. Along his ancestry there were adulterers (David and Bathsheba) and immigrants (Rahab from Canaan, Ruth from Moab). He was a carpenter. There is no clear thread of perfection in this, I think at first (and so did those who disbelieved his claims. Not perfection on their terms. Not the perfect one they were waiting for.). But maybe this is the point? What was pure and consistent and perfect when I really think about Jesus’ life was this: he only did what his Father told him to do. He was obedient even to the point of death (and who can live up to that!)
So what is ideal? Or maybe, a better question: what is purity, and when is the substance or person held most true to itself? As much as we are tempted to pull things to ourselves—acquisitions, sophisticated friends, lofty qualifications—we are ourselves none of these things. “Excellence is from God, perfectionism is from the devil,” I once read and now I think I’m starting to understand. Composition is a process of elimination, says my friend’s music professor.
This year end, as we work towards taking stock and clearing stock and resolutions, let’s look at the things we need to put off of ourselves—the things that smear and mar and obscure the who-we-are. Maybe true excellence is not just about strife to sharpen and hone and slap on the bells and whistles—It’s also about the being still and clear to listen for what is right and true, so that I can recognise my own hurts and scars, and the angry, jealous discord of my own life (my attitudes to my career, to my family, to my appearance), and then come to the One who has made all the amends. To be set right. Redeemed. Salvaged. Recycled. And made new. It’s not enough for me to be enhanced; I also need to be edited.
"life and society" will feature various people from different walks of life and various parts of the world. New posts are up every Monday and Thursday at 6pm (GMT +8 / Singapore time) through the first week of 2012. On Monday (Dec 26), I'll be featuring Marcus Seng, an acquaintance from university who used to steal the limelight with his striking mohawk in Geography lectures in freshmen year. He is now with the Singapore Navy and works to protect the coasts of our country.
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On PerfectionSuanne Chan
Coming home one Saturday afternoon, Mynah saw the old man with the white beard. He was standing next to the vegetable plot. His cotton-white beard jutted awkwardly forward out of a round face, and his balding head glowed in the sun. He was rooting awkwardly among the potatoes. What was he looking for?
Mynah tiptoed over and peered over his shoulder. Sun-spotted, his hands were covered with gray dust from the potatoes as he examined each one. Out of the corner of one eye he spotted Mynah and nodded.
“This one has an eye sprouting,” he said, by way of conversation, tossing a potato into a pail. “And this one… this one looks green.”
“They all look the same to me,” said Mynah. “Maybe some are just older or rounder or lumpier than others.”
“Oh but they are different, they all are,” he replied. “I’ve been searching all my life for the perfect potato. It should be regularly shaped. Clear skin, no blemishes or scars. Unbruised and new and earthy.”
“And what will happen when you find one?” A pause.
“I guess I’ll die happy.”
*****
I’ve been thinking about perfection a lot lately. I read somewhere once that there are two kinds of people in this world: the satisficers, and the maximisers. Satisficers work towards satisfying the needs of the job at hand, while Maximisers tend to work towards perfection. Our attitudes towards the ideal standard have implications for everything in life, from design, to ethics, to relationships.
So what is ideal? For the purposes of this post, I’m going to place the to-be-or-not-to-be-perfect dilemma within two contexts: nature, and Christmas. Let’s start with nature: in my pseudo-fable I was thinking about picking fruit or vegetables at the market. There is always that tension between finding something perfect, and something acceptable. In these days of agricultural sophistication, anything too perfect can also be suspect. (The picture-perfect peach you’re holding was probably sprayed with pesticides.) If we really think about ideals of beauty, most of us would probably cite nature as the golden standard. There is liberty inscribed into each toss of branches, each sliver of sea, even that droop of mangroves. There’s always an inspired quality to nature that makes me pick up a shell or flower or leaf and want to take it home. A wild abandon that is not lost because this petal is more ruffled or that leaf more tilted than its companion. Sometimes, looking at nature I am reminded that God never meant for us to compare ourselves with our own kind. Just before Jesus died the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was greater. “The greatest among you,” he said, “must be the servant of all.” For the quality of a thing is not in what it is, but in what it was made to do. And in the act of dying a fruit brings forth—well, fruit.
And then there is the incarnation. What does it mean that a thing could take on a new quality, become something else? I’m sure that plastic surgeons and makeup artists have their take on this. But Christmas tells us that what is ideal is not just the perfection of something put on, but also the rawness and vulnerability of something taken off. A God putting on flesh, but a God stripped of the power to save himself from torture, and mockery, and death.
And something more: like the old man in my story, Simon in the gospel of Luke saw in Jesus the perfection he’d been waiting for all his life—“Now I can die happy” he said (Luke 2). Was Jesus perfect the way you and I tend to think? By no means. But well, the Bible talks about him as a branch, a plant. Not even a particularly attractive plant.
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him (Isaiah 53).
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him (Isaiah 53).
So what is ideal? Or maybe, a better question: what is purity, and when is the substance or person held most true to itself? As much as we are tempted to pull things to ourselves—acquisitions, sophisticated friends, lofty qualifications—we are ourselves none of these things. “Excellence is from God, perfectionism is from the devil,” I once read and now I think I’m starting to understand. Composition is a process of elimination, says my friend’s music professor.
This year end, as we work towards taking stock and clearing stock and resolutions, let’s look at the things we need to put off of ourselves—the things that smear and mar and obscure the who-we-are. Maybe true excellence is not just about strife to sharpen and hone and slap on the bells and whistles—It’s also about the being still and clear to listen for what is right and true, so that I can recognise my own hurts and scars, and the angry, jealous discord of my own life (my attitudes to my career, to my family, to my appearance), and then come to the One who has made all the amends. To be set right. Redeemed. Salvaged. Recycled. And made new. It’s not enough for me to be enhanced; I also need to be edited.
---
"life and society" will feature various people from different walks of life and various parts of the world. New posts are up every Monday and Thursday at 6pm (GMT +8 / Singapore time) through the first week of 2012. On Monday (Dec 26), I'll be featuring Marcus Seng, an acquaintance from university who used to steal the limelight with his striking mohawk in Geography lectures in freshmen year. He is now with the Singapore Navy and works to protect the coasts of our country.
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