Argumentative Essay On Perfection

Perfection: Are Your Chances Good?

Perfection is much like the lottery; many people will strive for it with the hopes of attaining their ultimate goal, only to realize that reaching it is nearly impossible. However, unlike the lottery, there is not even the slightest chance of winning the final prize. To be completely perfect is an impossible feat, and the more attempts made to reach a status of “perfection”, the more let down a person will be. The quality of complete perfection is unobtainable and unreasonable, yet many cultures and certain groups of people take pride in being known as perfectionists. This reach for the impossible can be seen in the strict code followed by all knights during the feudal time period. Sir Gawain in the late

Attempting to follow the extremely contradictory knightly code, Gawain develops a bad self-image, has trouble thinking freely, and loses track of his overall purpose. The setbacks he experiences mirror the setbacks people face when striving for complete perfection. However, Gawain is able to embark on an eye-opening journey driven by the need to be perfect, which eventually helps him to realize that with the fight for perfection comes not only negatives, but a few positives as well. Reaching for goals that might not necessarily be in the realm of possibility may mean failure to complete that specific task or reach that specific status, however, the achievement of slightly smaller goals is likely. When looking for complete perfection, lessons can be learned and smaller goals can be achieved, which may eventually lead to the completion of a main goal. It is when a person loses sight of the fact that perfection is unobtainable when self-images are destroyed, free thinking is lost, and when people wavier

Constant failure can cause someone to ask: “why am I even trying?” and “what the point if I can’t do it perfectly?”. Teresa Borchard writes about her losing sight of a path in front of her in her article "Good Perfectionism versus Bad Perfectionism", where she talking about getting caught in an OCD loop stating: “I have trouble letting go of the decision I made last week, or a mistake I made six years ago, or something in the future that I’m preparing for” (Borchard). Gawain experiences the same kinds of set-backs during the poem, often veering off the path in front of him because of his constant want for perfection. Even when he accomplishes a goal, he feels as though he doesn’t actually deserve any positive reinforcement because he wasn’t perfect with every step of the way. For example, Gawain states "I am greatly honoured, though I am not in fact such a man as you speak of, to deserve such respect as you have just described I am completely unworthy, I know very well” (Sir Gawain… 1241-1244). Rejecting encouraging feed-back as well as getting caught up in the small imperfections of something positive are both results of striving for complete perfection. It is easy to “forget that as humans we’re part of nature, as well. As such, we would benefit if we came into acceptance of the natural flow of life, which by the way,