Comparison. It gets us all sometimes. Looking at somebody's killer body at the gym and thinking twice about yours. Seeing someone looking amazing in a swimsuit and hoping you look like that.
Personally, if I could end people's comparison to one another today, I would. I've been guilty of it too, and so have many others. Someone's beauty is not the absence of your own.
Try to imagine these 2 scenarios:
A little boy loves reading comics: his favourite is the superhero ones. All of his favourite heroes are super buff, and he thinks they look really cool. However, he notices all his real-life heroes from magazines or movies are muscular too. He's no hero, but he soon finds himself wondering if he's supposed to look like them.
In another instance, a child once loved playing with her barbie dolls, as a lot of little kids do. Playing with her dolls used to be fun, but she stopped feeling good about herself when she played with them. She slowly begins to think that she is fat because her doll is much more thinner than her. In reality, the girl is healthy and the barbie is not even close. What society thinks is the perfect body type is usually far from the truth.
Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting. ~ Anne Lamott
Society depicts the word perfect with pictures of faces and the way bodies are formed. And as humans, we are behaviourally predisposed to search for perfection. Everybody wants to be perfect, and when they become "perfect", they want to be better.
People strive for perfection in numerous ways. Some pursue perfection spiritually; they follow the principles of seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and speaking no evil. Some chase it in their occupation; they want to be the best at their work and refuse to have any competition. And some chase it mentally; balancing the hardships of life and the balances that support them.
But let’s face it - perfection is unattainable. Those who commit their lives to be perfect are simply chasing shadows. Perfection is not something you can turn on by pushing a button or flipping a switch. It is an abstract belief, something we humans made up in a reckless attempt to make us all seem better. Nobody can ever be perfectly flawless.
Perfection means you have done everything right and nothing wrong. To me, this seems like a standard that's set way too high. A painter can make the most stunning painting that mankind has ever seen, and it would still not be perfect.
The reason perfection is unachievable is because of one thing - opinion. The most captivating drawing would still have its fair share of criticisers. Someone might not find any faults in a painting that somebody else would find in a heartbeat, but that is only because they look at it with a different pair of eyes. There cannot be a concrete definition of perfection if it is an opinion.
In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty because of her divine looks and features. Even as the personification of beauty itself, Aphrodite's true appearance is unknown because she would appear differently to each man as their personal epitome of physical attraction. This is the perfect example of how perfection depends entirely on the eyes of the beholder.
Perfection will be nullified so long as the human race can still criticize, and from my viewpoint, we will be able to for a long, long time. You should never stress about fixing every single critique one may have about your life. Instead, we should take pride in our flaws, both innate and nurtured, as they define our identity. It is critical to realise that our mistakes do not define us, but rather, our ability to persevere and try again in the face of failure.
Why, then, does perfection, as a term, exist? I guess that we all aim for perfection - whether or not we believe we will attain it - just so we can become better for it.
When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target. ~ Geoffrey F. Fisher
I, personally, define perfection as pursuing your passion and being able to hold on to happiness and motivation at all times. In a society where being wealthy, attractive or famous is considered the perfect life, the only thing that will truly make you happy is success in what you love. Always remember that you were born to be real, not to be perfect.