The glory of God is a human being fully alive and to be alive consists in beholding God.

Saint Irenaeus

I am sometimes amazed at the lengths to which people will go in order to become “fully human” or “fully alive”. Gurus, saints, sinners, and seekers have all sought ways to attain this sort of moral perfection. Oftentimes, the difficult thing about this path is that one will wonder at what they’re giving up. It will seem like they must forgo things that make life enjoyable or worthwhile, such as humour or emotion or leisure; and you know, while I would not critique the goal of self-improvement in general, they would have a point. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met, for instance, who say they’ve found joy in God but aren’t at all joyous in their lives. I’ve also met people with very unloving ideas of how to love after having pursued some kind of a religious quest. At the root of many of these ideas is the idea that we are somehow “broken” or “not ourselves” most of the time—but is this so?

In my undergrad, I went to a pub night for the Classics Department, where I met a professor who studied ancient philosophy. I forget his name, but he was really cool. So cool, in fact, that we closed down the bar with him. There were four of us remaining, and as half-drunk academics often do, we talked about the prospect of an afterlife. I don’t remember what any of the rest of us said, but I do remember the professor’s thoughts. He was, of course, thinking about the afterlife in the Christian sense. He was thinking that by the time he got there, he would be purified of all that rendered him imperfect. He would be a being of spirit, “like the angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25). Of course, I wouldn’t suggest that this is representative of all Christian views of the afterlife, but it does have a basis in the Bible. Moreover, it has a basis in Catholic theology, which often asserts that God won’t look upon any unholiness whatsoever to a point where many, if not most, individuals will have to pass through purgatory before they are able to enter Heaven. Thus, any being in Heaven, at least from a Catholic perspective, would be perfect. They would be “fully alive”, as Irenaeus would have it; or, to put it another way, they would be “fully” human. And what did this professor have to say about it? “I don’t care for it.”

To a person of faith, this would sound ridiculous, but allow me to elaborate. His concern was that it wouldn’t truly be “him”. The professor would likely agree that he is a flawed individual, but what of it? For him, these flaws were part of what make him who he is, not something that detracts from it. He was who he was—or, if he’s still around, he is who he is, warts and all. And if I’m quite honest, the older I get, the more I have begun to understand what he was talking about. It’s not that self-improvement is a bad thing. Rather, I would boil his concern down to an idea of human nature that is accepting of flaws instead of viewing them as mere detractors. Flaws, in this man’s eyes, are not something that stops us from being human: they are what make us human.

I once wrote a piece about a Daoist saying that “when man was full, there was no history“, meaning there was no need to write anything down when things were perfect. There were no stories to tell because there was no conflict. And if you were to try to imagine what this period looked like, I’ll bet you would run into difficulties as well as disagreements. After all, when something is so clean, it stinks. Something feels off. To put it bluntly, trials and tribulations are what make up the stories that tell us who we are as human beings. One can’t have an idea of perfection apart from this because our stories are what enlighten us as to what fundamental problems make up the human experience. Without these stories, then, what are we to think of ourselves? There’s simply nothing to think. We would just “be”, and this is a confounding, ineffable thought.

In a way, therefore, it is true that we are somehow “broken”, as I said. There is always room for self-improvement, and that journey takes a lifetime. On the other hand, this brokenness is not a bad thing. Ironically, it moves and shapes us. It’s not something that ought to shame us since it is a description that implicates everybody. Self-flagellation is so last millennium. There are better ways to deal with these problems than penance. Punishment, after all, has a history of being a poor reformer. What I’m suggesting is far more difficult. You can be at peace with your imperfection. Whenever this comes up, I always think of my friend and what he told his fiancée. He never loved her for being perfect. He loves her for her perfections and imperfections. She is perfectly imperfect for him. And if we can think of other people this way, then why not ourselves?

Maybe perfection is not our ultimate goal in life. Maybe instead we should become the most perfectly imperfect people we can be. There is, of course, nothing wrong with perfection, but it is also true that nobody’s perfect.