My actual prefect speech

Prefects are not perfect but anagrammatically, they are.

We are only human. We are flawed. It’s what makes up the essence of our humanity. As we trudge through life with feet of clay, failure can strikes us down.  What if we are not up to the task? Then we challenge ourselves with the question, “who needs perfection?” I mean, really needs perfection?

If a student works hard all year, and attaining a grade of roughly 95% that are of excellence standard, to come top of the class, should they feel a failure because of that elusive 5%?  For that matter, if they attained 100%, would that be ‘perfection’?  The student that achieves 30%, drops out of the course, finds work as a barista and goes on to have a happy and fulfilled life – did they need ‘perfection’?

Today, I ask you to think again about perfection, and whether you really need it.  Too often we aim for perfection and berate ourselves when we fall short.  Some of us avoid that humiliation by simply giving up.  I don’t want you to give up.  I want you to aim high, certainly, but don’t stop simply because you didn’t achieve perfection. 

There are two points I want to highlight. Firstly, perfection for us mere mortals is by its very nature impossible to achieve.  Secondly, to achieve perfection is not actually a desirable thing.

Firstly, why is perfection impossible?  Perfection – being correct in every detail – escapes our attempts to achieve it.  Firstly – much like beauty – perfection is in the eye of the beholder.  One man’s perception of the perfect and ideal life differs in the view of another.  Notions of perfection are therefore relative – relative to the individual, to their culture, to their values, to their notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. 

So perfection defeats any notion of an objective definition.

As well, we humans are not created for perfection, we are created to survive. Humans learn by making mistakes and surviving.  It simply does not make sense to be a race that seeks to perfect a single thing whilst all else does not matter.  We do have feet of clay and so every thing we do carries that fatal flaw in its making.

Consider the very highest works of art.  The Mona Lisa – often considered a towering achievement of art – was painted by Leonardo da Vinci over the course of 17 years, and it only came to its current state when he died.  So clearly that painting is not perfection.  

Perfection requires far too much work and is unattainable.  We cannot define perfection objectively, and in any case as flawed as us humans as our creations must also be imperfect. Like every yin has its yang, so to if that the world were to have good to exist, evil must be present to contrast this. Evil present = not perfect. Perfection is impossible. (Sorry Ajay)

Secondly, even if perfection were possible, would it be good for us? 

Even the very best, having achieved the highest levels of excellence that humans are capable of eventually are succeeded and overshadowed by competitors or, sometimes, by themselves. 

As humans, we need to progress and grow, to strive, to achieve and to fly above our flawed nature, to fly “to the heights”.  Therefore perfection is not desirable.

Now consider the original question.  Who needs perfection?  The simple answer is that no-one needs perfection.  Perfection is not possible due to our flawed and fragile natures, and in any event we cannot agree what perfection is.  Perfection is also not desirable, as knowing that we can do no better than our predecessors removes our desire to strive to succeed.  In fact we need imperfection.  In that imperfection there is hope.  Within that hope, there is the opportunity to better the world, to break new grounds of excellence.  We need to set the challenge, to stake our claim in the ground and ask all before us to set that bar higher.  In doing so we must recognise that what we have done is not perfect, and that what we have done contains flaws. There is nothing perfect in this world, but the world can be made better by our own actions.  

I like to finish with an excerpt from a book called “The Alphabet Of The Human Heart” “P is for Perfectionism. Trying to get something right is the best way of getting it wrong. Perfection is a kind of paralysis. The tighter you hold onto something, the more you hold back. Often the best way to improve something is to let it go. So do the best you possibly can, finish it, and relax. It might be better than you think. It might be even perfect.”