Perfection Perception

By Eugene Loh
From A Slice of Life


Many of us conventionally accept this world as an imperfect one. Obviously, there is much unfairness and injustice. What about poverty, hunger, suffering and pain? And surely one cannot miss the ugliness, the violence, the wickedness?

Everyday, seemingly innocent lives are lost, best laid plans go awry, babies are born physically-handicapped, children charge into war zones with guns, hearts get broken, and loved ones fall ill.

Yes, things hardly look ideal, but is it possible that perfection does exist? And it's just waiting to be perceived, to be discovered?

An undeniable, hidden force moves this world. Call it God, call it Nature, call it the Law of the Universe; there is much debate over just what this unseen force is, but most people agree that it exists.

Sure, the sun could simply be rising and setting all by itself every day, but what of the bamboo fruits in a region of India that bloom once only every half a century? What about the perfectly-symmetrical snowflake? What's their motivation? What charts the movement of animals across continents, the clouds that bring rain just in time to parched lands, the waxing and waning of the moon?

Nature, or whatever you wish to call it, creates a perfect loop, a perfect circle. Human beings are also part of Nature; we are part of the loop. No matter how problematic our lives may appear to be, they must be part of the design.

When we see this natural world as a whole, our own problems become insignificant. Entire animal colonies can vanish overnight; what makes our work stress so terrible? Because it's happening to us, yes, but that doesn't mean there isn't stress, pain, and suffering everywhere else. Death and tribulation are part of the natural world. We are too small to perceive the perfect pattern, to follow the perfect loop all the way through.

The image of a beautiful blue sky and the picture of vultures ripping away at an antelope's rotting carcass may seem very distant from each other, but they're all microscopic threads that interweave through the Fabric of Life.

Similarly, the suffering, pain, death and heartache in our own lives may seem uncalled for, but they all have their place in the modus operandi of this world. In Richard Bach's book, "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", the Messiah, Donald Shimodo, was lying in some meadow, gazing up at the sky with his pal Richard. Donald at some point asked Richard, "Is that a perfect sky, or should those clouds be changed somehow to make them more perfect?" Richard of course says yes, it's a perfect sky, how could it not be? And Donald Shimodo comes back with, "Well then, what makes you think that your life could be any less perfect than that sky?"