Perfection

What is perfection for humans?  Is it the baseball pitcher who retires 27 men in a row with no runs, no hits, no errors and no one reaching base at all?  Is it the bowler who throws 12 strikes in a row for a perfect game of 300?  Or perhaps now that bowling scores have been so inflated artifically through technology, is perfection now throwing 36 straight strikes to roll a perfect three-game series?

Many sports allow some form of perfection.  Golfers can hit a hole in one.  Football teams can have a perfect season.  So can basketball teams at the college level (it won't happen in the pros).  Sports where there is judging can have a perfect result.  Gymnasts, figure skaters, platform divers and the like can all receive a perfect score from judges.  And such achievements were once incredibly noteworthy.  Remember the attention that Nadia Comaneci got at the 1976 Summer Olympics for recording the first perfect 10 in gymnastics history.  They were so unprepared for it, the scoreboard showed her score as 1.0 because it wasn't configured to display a 10.0.

But most things in life don't involve actual perfection.  There is no "perfect" song.  No "perfect" meal, although meal preparation competitions might involve perfect scores.  Again, that's the artificiality of having judging by humans.  What one set of judges see as perfect another set may judge more harshly.  There is no perfect car, no perfect film and so on.

Which brings me to my real question.  Have you ever experienced perfection, as you define it?  A perfect moment.  A perfect hour.  A perfect day.  I tried to think of days in my life that were perfect.  My graduation from high school was close to perfect.  But I dropped something as I walked away with my diploma and so there are photographs of me having to pick it up.  Worse yet, I was rejected by a girl that night.  So, nowhere near perfect.

Graduation from basic military training was a great day, right up until the 14 hour bus ride to the next duty station.  Somehow having to get off a bus just before midnight and being subjected to two hours of mandatory briefings removed perfection from that equation.

I can't view either of my wedding days as perfect.  Not just because the marriages ended in divorce, but because there problems marred my experiences on both of those days.  So, after racking my brain, I can't think of a single day in my life that was indeed perfect. 

But I'm hopeful one is right around the corner.  If you've had one, good for you.  I hope you have more of them.  If you haven't, join me in hoping one is coming.