Loving perfectly

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly” (Sam Keen).

Indeed this is the test of enduring love. To love perfectly is to love beyond the imperfection of a person because, if you think about it, doesn't perfection embodied make love mediocre? And I am only talking about human love. Let me explain.

In perfection, what is there to love? In perfection, love is made easy, even second-natured. A perfect person, if she exists at all, lures love in like honey would enthrall an unwitting bee. A perfect person makes loving her effortless, painless, and even irresistibly natural. Such a love has nothing of itself to boast about because it loves those who are most deserving. And nothing can be more deserving than perfection embodied.

Imagine a fundamentalist saying, "What's there to hate in hating the devil, you just naturally hate." By the same token, one may say, "What's there to love in loving a perfect person, you just naturally love."  In the same way that you cannot add a minute more to eternity, you cannot add an ounce more passion to loving a perfect person. That which comes naturally comes inevitably, invariably and even inescapably. I’d expect a perfect person to say, “I make loving me easy.”

Only a fool would find loving a perfect person time consuming, cumbersome or even annoying. He either doesn’t know how to love or he is completely blind to it as in empathy-crippled. Therefore fools and perfection do not mix like truth and half-truths.

Having said all that, this perfection embodied is vastly different from the so called perfection of a rock star or a screen siren. These are worldly idols with only perceived perfection and not perfection as embodied. Their fans' undying adoration of them is not the same as loving a perfect person.

Just as makeup covers freckles, the media glare and the electrifying stage hide their scores of imperfection. Living with them would reveal how deeply flawed first (or momentary) impression can be. But a perfect person would stand the test of even such micro-obsessive scrutiny. She would be perfect in public and in private, in character and never out of character, in good mood and in all moods, in fortune and in misfortune, in health and in sickness, in youth and in old age, consistent and faithful, generous and patient, gentle and humble, and last but not least, always self sacrificing.

No doubt your days will be challenged by external circumstances and you will not be spared a bad day at work. But loving a perfect person leaves you no ground at all to put the blame on her. She is in fact your go-to person for hope, comfort, encouragement, faith, renewal and love. So, loving such a person is unbelievably unilateral because she will be doing all the work and you are  reduced into the marital equivalent of a couch potato.

Alas, while this world doesn’t lack imperfection embodied in all shapes and sizes, it is the perfect soul that exists in extreme rarity; if she even exists at all (I am just being ironic). I am afraid finding her, that is, the perfect being, would marginalize love and the act of loving in the same way that giving in to every whims and fancy of a child would spoil him.

But my point is this, our love, though already fragile, will suffer the pangs of mediocrity in the bosom of perfection because the latter retires love into a lull of passivity. So let's turn a notch down on the idealism dial and return to planet earth.

Love’s purpose is therefore to embrace imperfection and to look past it because it is only in doing so that love is put to the test. This test makes love stronger just like an oak tree that has withstood gales would be tougher or the butterfly that has overcome the struggles in a chrysalis would be free. We are called to accept the imperfection in others in the same way that we are called to accept the imperfection in ourselves. This is how our love can be perfected. With some ironical oversight, I see the equation as this: Imperfection perfects love or love is perfected in imperfection.

But how do we learn to see an imperfect person perfectly? What do we look out for? How does the perfect vision of an imperfect person look like? I guess such perfect sight varies from person to person and situation to situation. Just as no two persons are alike, no two relationships are the same. There is no template or cookie-cut mold for such vision because every life shared in a marital union takes a journey that defies conformity and uniformity. In other words, there is no beaten path to a marital journey; only new paths hammered out by their collective choices made on a day-to-day basis.

In a marriage, when two imperfect souls commit in a nuptial bliss, their lives conjoin in ways that differ from the marriage of another. They will face challenges that are unique to their lives and their responses to them will further deepen the distinction. It is in these trials that the couple either stay together stronger or drift apart weaker. What distinguishes those who stay and those who leave is what distinguishes those who have learned to see an imperfect person perfectly and those who have not.

I think we will not be able to see the imperfect person perfectly if we fail or refuse to see the imperfections in ourselves. It starts with us and ends with us. How do we see ourselves? Do we delve deep enough to see our own flaws? Do we even admit that beneath all our achievements in this life lies the fragility of the soul which is loosely held together by intemperance and intolerance, by guilt and regrets, by a truth we cannot face and a hurt we cannot erase?

I imagine us as self-driven bounty hunters unscrupulously lifting every rocks, highbeaming every crevices and scorching every hideouts to unearth the hidden flaws of others while we keep skeletons in our closet locked away from the public eye. This delusion only widens the ego-gap and blurs true love's vision. How mistaken is our inflated self-image that we are blindsided by it to deny our own imperfection and to decry the imperfection of others. Surely, it is when we admit to our failings that we are able to empathize with the failings of others, especially our loved ones. Unless we see how we  have fallen short, we will never fully see the imperfect person in the way that she/he deserves to be seen and this selective myopia is the cause of our collective dystopia.

Coming back full circle, love is a contradiction of itself if love demands nothing short of perfection from another. Even the mere expectation of it compromises love's most transforming potential, that is, to love the unlovable and to forgive the unforgivable, and in all that, to love unconditionally.

So learning to love is learning to see beyond the flaws of your loved ones. It is learning to bear with them by turning such forbearance inwards to reveal our own failings. And finally, it is to understand and to accept that what ultimately dehumanizes us is not so much the lack of love but to come to love pursuing  perfection and nothing less. Cheerz.

*Image via "blog.weddingstar.com"