Perfection, that nearly unattainable, elusive muse cleverly avoids capture. Perfection is not accidental. Perfection courts like a tantalizing paramour, stoking from a faint ember a burning desire to be owned, to be devoured yet she slips away leaving an aching need. So close and yet gone. She is unlike Haley’s comet which occurs so rarely an entire lifetime can pass without seeing it; not predictable like a heavenly body in orbit, nor a fixed star around which we revolve. Perfection is obtainable, always fleeting and as addictive as any drug. Ask anyone who has made a perfect fall away jumper with nothing but net in a final four game. They don’t need to see the instant replay, the FEELING of it is seared into their memory, their mind and the sinew of their muscles. Ask any gymnast that has flown through the air and stuck the perfect 10 landing. They don’t hear the crowd roar; they hear the own mind scream Gotcha!, every fiber affirming the instance of perfection. When a chef pulls a chocolate souffle from the oven, its roof levitating magically and sets it on the counter without collapse, their guts clenches and they blink their eyes shut and celebrate loudly within their mind. Perfection tastes delicious. And if ever in our lives we are blessed or lucky to achieve perfection, no matter how minor, we understand the joy because we know that perfection is some kind of magic. The gymnast runs the mat and flips the flip a thousand times. She does it the same way over and over and over, as if practice will earn perfection. But it is an odds game. The perfect jump is but a mere penny in a fountain. She tosses her penny, makes her wish and runs like the devil, her muscles imprinted with the memory of action so intimately known it is almost automatic. In fact….thinking about the act makes perfection more elusive. Thinking causes one to choke. But when you let go and let what you know happen…without knowing or thinking…a bit of magic shows up. If perfection could be harnessed or capture, Michael Jordan would have owned it. Pavorotti, too. Or Mary Lou Rheton. But perfection will not be tamed, nor should we want it tamed. It is in the desire for something, the wishing and actual WORK put forth in hopes of attaining it that make finally getting it all the more sweet…….Even if it is for but a fleeting moment.
