Perfection

I have an image of a woman on a beach. The sand is soft and smooth, the sky is clear. She is wearing a floppy sun hat, and khaki shorts. Her arms are open wide, as if in dance. She is smiling. Behind the camera the sun is at an ideal angle to stimulate the color of the water, vibrant against the shore. She is glowing. Everything about this image screams "perfection".

This image is from a Freedom 55 poster. It is one that is etched in my brain from childhood. It is the one I unconsciously use as an anchor of expectation; the image of the ultimate achievement. In my mind it is a perfect moment - life's beauty expressed ideally in a dance, on a beach, under the sun. Freedom. Liberation. Simplicity.

This ideal, I realize, is not a unique one. That is why it was used as an advertisement. And as such an overused, commodified concept, it is attached to a wide web of cultural significance. Much could be said about this image, and about why I, a young, blonde, white, middle class, English speaking Canadian may treasure it so dearly. But the fact remains that I do treasure it, and always have since that first moment of exposure.

And yet, as a representation of the ideal, one necessary feature relative to its conceptual value is its unattainability. It is in our nature to want what we can't have. And considering the fact that this image remains in my mind as "perfect", one would assume this is something I have never, yet, achieved. Never touched it. Never felt its glow.

Is it true that we can never really experience perfection? That if we are to ever achieve it, we necessarily manipulate our ideal to supercede the experience or perception of the achievement, so that we are always falling short of something? Always chasing something? Can we ever, in essence, be inside perfection?

It's been said that life is merely a collection of moments- that the true nature of the human experience exists within these units. A drop of fresh rain on the skin. The scent of baking bread. The sight of the sun's rays slicing through a break in the clouds. The sound of the sea. And in these almost preverbal experiences life is truly represented. If this is true, then life is full of perfection. But it is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. And, maybe quite significantly, in a culture that hurries us collectively along down the path of progress, it is almost impossible to stop and take these moments in, breathe them deep enough to feel their perfection. And we are left with the hollow feeling of missing something, and needed to fill it with images of "impossibility".

I ponder these thoughts as the Pacific ocean splays mist into the air, collapsing waves onto the black igneous rocks that contrast starkly with the sapphire sky- a cacophony of clatter around me (finches cheep, sea lions bark, waves roll, boobies plunk) - and then pause. The image in the poster is me. I am that woman, heart in dance under the dusky glow. I have achieved that aspiration, and am inside a moment without want. I am not chasing. I am sitting quietly, watching the watery world around me soften in the sinking light of day, glad to be alive. Glad to be alive. Perfection.

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