“Forgiveness,” a friend said recently, “is abandoning all hope of a perfect past.”
That one statement alone could put psychoanalysts out of business.
He was quoting, but had no idea who said it first (if you know, dear reader, please tell). Anything that makes me laugh out loud and at the same time makes me a tad teary inside is too good to keep to myself, however, so my minor mission of goodwill to the world was to tell it to everyone (okay, nearly everyone) I met over the next couple of weeks. Best reaction: the stranger who overheard me in a bookstore and asked me to repeat it. His eyes lit up and his whole body visibly relaxed as he beamed and said: ”Thanks — I needed that.”
I felt like I was spreading around little bits of manna from heaven.
Then yesterday another friend looked puzzled. “You mean forgiveness is about letting go of the wish for a better past,” she said finally.
I felt kind of deflated. I mean, I suppose you could put it that way, but then it loses its ability to shock you into recognition. Mildly phrased home truths don’t make you want to laugh and cry at the same time. It was precisely the grand sweepingness of the perfection statement that so seduced me. Its flair. Its sly teasing of the human condition, and its play on the inscription over the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno — “abandon hope all ye who enter here.” How perfect, as it were, to define hell as the longing for perfection.
I never quite know what to do with perfection. Face to face with the perfect mind/body/smile/home/gift — a perfect storm of perfect images — I become ill at ease, stifled by a sense of artifice. Faultlessness is bland, somehow, as coldly uninviting as the photo shoots in the copies of Architectural Digest and Vogue in my dentist’s waiting room. (The same dentist, by the way, can’t understand why I won’t let him fix an overlapping tooth that an old lover called my fang. I love the idea of having a fang, even if you have to love me to imagine I have one.)
I do not want to be perfect, or to be perfected. The lines on my face, the mistakes I make, the absurdities I know I am capable of, are all part of me. And I get suspicious when people talk about perfectibility.
Supportive as I generally am of our president (Afghanistan and Iraq policy being huge exceptions), ”a more perfect union” may have sounded good on the campaign trail but doesn’t stand up to a moment’s thought. What perfect union? And what would “more perfect” mean? But “a less imperfect union” wouldn’t exactly have made the rhetorical cut. I guess Obama too has a weakness for the sweeping grand statement.
So here’s another one: The only human state of perfection is death — the ultimate equilibrium, an end to all desire and all doubt, all joy and all anxiety.
And since that one could lead to a few lifetimes of exploration, regard this for now as merely an opening salvo — and feel free to fire right on back!
Filed under: existence, sanity Tagged: | a more perfect union, forgiveness, imperfection, perfectibility, perfection
One of my favorite quotes (immortal truths put on spiritual 3×5 cards) is from James Stephens’ Crock of Gold. It is the Philosopher’s reaction to his morning porridge:
“Perfection is finality. Finality is death. Nothing is perfect. It has lumps in it.”
A perfect topic for an imperfect discussion. Of course, that’s why it’s so perfect. I’ve always wondered why people seem so comfortable with me and in my home. We’re both really lumpy.
In 2002 I wrote the following song about an arab teenage girl in Israel who blew herself up at a shopping center (I think) killing another teenage Israeli girl. It relates to Forgiveness.
A Forgiving Heart
They hugged each other, shared a kiss
Only God could make a love like this
They’d known each other for many years
Laughed together, dried each other’s tears
Teenage girls together on a shopping spree
Blown apart by patriotic hypocrisy
What do we do now? Where do we go from here?
Land won’t fix it. Politicians can’t cure it
Armies won’t stop it now
Money can’t buy it. Religion ain’t changed it
If peace is ever really gonna start
Everybody’ gonna need a forgiving heart
They fought each other. Their bond was hate
Claiming God determined their fate
They’d known each other for many years
Spreading hatred, sorrow and fears
Soldiers who’ve been at war for an eternity
They live and die for patriotic hypocrisy
Hatred reigns in the birthplace of love
Lives are wasted when push comes to shove
Thanks for the lyrics, Ted, though I tend to be much more hard-headed when it comes to politics. I doubt that the key to “solving” the Israel/Palestine conflict is forgiveness, or love. If anything, I think it’s self-interest. Will post about this soon, but for now, enough to look at the Israel-Egypt peace agreement, which has held firm for over 30 years despite all provocations, with no love lost between the two countries. What made that possible was not forgiveness, but pragmatism. Though I guess it could be said that an essential element of pragmatism is focusing on the possible, not the ideal — i.e. abandoning all hope of a perfect past OR a perfect future.
Here is something to think about. Its in in the forward of a book by E.J. Gold. To me its worth the whole book. The name of the book “American Book of the Died”:
Its when you first get in up in the morning
And smell your own breath
And sit on the john to let out
The days first blast
Of methane and sulpher dioxide
That it hits home the hardest…
The whole system
Operates on rot.
It isn’t just the body
That fabulous human machine,
That tip-to-toe mass of organic decay
in seething fury to survive,
One microorganisms over another,
Fighting like fury to stay on top,
Dominating the dung heap for a single moment
And succumbing the next,
That walking, talking
Semiplastic garbage bag
With the slim semblance
Of Intellence and Purpose.
And here you are
Sitting smack dab in the middle of it all,
Right in the center of the swamp,
A king or queen riding the wild horse of rot,
And heres another box of cereal about to
Become one with the human host,
Another few hours of fodder
For the great compost heap,
Fueling it for the day ahead.
Steeling itself for meaningful deeds,
Girding its loins for the far-reaching,
Earth-shaking events,
The shy-piercing thoughts,
All-embracing transdimensional visions,
The subtle shadings of emotional delights,
Lover and beloved
Gazing with rapturous lustful wonder
A swooning, sweeping, swaying dance of love,
An interlude of romance,
A moment ‘s brush with beauty,
Another afternoon of love,
Another sexy bag of rot.
20th Century North American Bardic Lay
Glad I’m not E.J.Gold.