Lens yesi vetuku dorakadu ra ye defect

 

This song titled "Mr Perfect" is from a Telugu movie Arya-2 put here to sooth your senses. However, the actor Allu Arjun has made a good attempt to make a point 'how a Mr Perfect should be', but the reality remains distant.

Perfection is a myth. In other words, there is no human being who is perfect in the eyes of the world. There cannot be any. Now, I am little confused as 'myth' may not be as right a word as 'mirage' would be for perfection. Moreover, a saying by a China born American writer Edith Schaeffer seems pretty relevant that “People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it”.

More interestingly though, the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once quoted that “They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes a man perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds”. This quote of Churchill can be bulldozed by another quote of a French writer Voltaire that "A witty saying proves nothing". The final argument which sustains is that perfection remains a (non-existing) mirage, an unachievable target which some people set for themselves.

I would differentiate the pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of 'continuous improvement' on two counts. First, the former marks a state of stagnation, death or 'The End' but the latter signifies a stage of further movement, life and 'rolling'. Second, perfection maybe an outcome but improvement is a process. Granting the argument earlier established, why do some of us try to be Mr Perfect and thrive to achieve perfection when there is no such thing? The most plausible answer in my mind is those who look for perfection, in fact, do not want to achieve it literally. Rather, they want to 'play safe' just to fall short of a better target. For example, those salesmen who are given a target to sell 50 units of a product per day would wish to keep a self-set-target to as high as to sell 100 units per day, so that even if they fall short of it, they make it to a good (or better) level.

One aspect of pursuit to perfection is to avoid mistakes and worse still, not to acknowledge one's mistakes. Both these are as common as each other. I remember, one of my professor Carlos Isquidera used to say that "Mistakes are the gifts of God, provided one learns from them". It is so, because mistakes throw an opportunity to learn and improve. Say, let's do better mistakes! Ironically, the correction and resultant improvement can begin only after the acknowledgment of the mistake. For instance, one of the objective of conducting an Impact Assessment Study is to redesign and realign the process/program. Thus, the program will actually be redesigned only after the findings of the study are acknowledged to be true. Had the objective of the program been to achieve perfection in its operations, there would not have been any need of conducting the impact assessment itself.

The process of such a pursuit can contribute significantly to the development of one's quality of doing a work, defined popularly by efficiency and effectiveness. At the same time, the desperateness and discontent after falling short of perfection can lead to another set of undesirable stress. The desperateness can mislead and sway the focus during the work and discontent can damage the psychology and attitude. Ultimately, the pursuit of perfection can help influence positively only those who can manage desperateness, discontent and stress. For all other people, especially those who are emotionally unstable, such a pursuit will not add any value to their work and paralyze their psychological strength.

Given the fact that most of the people get into such pursuits with an sub-conscious mind, care should be taken to review one's attitude towards life. To bring this consciousness, every morning I question myself, "am I going to be Mr Perfect or Mr Improvement?"