Being perfectly imperfect in an imperfectly perfect world
<p>The question whether we should be perfect is a question that should never arise. I live in East Asia, where perfection is firmly engrained in parenting and education, and I witness its sometimes destructive power on an almost daily basis. In my programs on <a href="https://www.francislaleman.com/youth" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Meaningful Youth Engagement</a> I meet a great number of young people — and there is hardly anybody who doesn’t complain about the constant pressure of parent-and-society-imagined perfection. If people feel locked-up, constrained, <a href="https://www.enfilms.asia/new-page-4" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">crammed</a>, caged, unappreciated, lastingly discontent, and generally unhappy — it is the constant hammering of the nail to perfection that brings them there.</p>
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<p>The perfect imperfection of an unrideable horse, installation by the EYEYAH! collective at the National Design Centre (Singapore) — photo by flaleman, August 2023</p>
<h2>The perfect imperfection of language</h2>
<p>Even in Buddhist philosophy, the idea of perfection is all over the place. The literature on perfection is a vast body of texts and teachings culminating in the all but esoteric <strong>prajñapāramitā sūtras</strong> — with lists of five, six, ten and twelve perfections, leaving us dazed — if not by their always shifting number and mind-stretching overlaps, then by the even greater number of commentary texts trying to make heads and tails of the perfections in thousands and thousands of pages with documents looking like this</p>
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