perfection, agility and humility

perfection: the highest degree of proficiency, skill or excellence

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." -Jesus

I remember when I first realized that I was a half-way decent runner. It was during a health class in community college where the instructor required us to run a 1.5 miler. I smoked everyone; even the black guy. A woman in the class told me afterwards that I should run in real races.

The next test was flexibility. We had to twist ourselves around and push a little widget as far as we could across some sort of measuring device. It looked to me like many of the students were cheating by using their wrists or the momentum of their twist to push it further. When it was my turn, I refused to stoop to such levels... but somewhere down inside I also knew I had to make up for my terrific run. So I did horribly on the flexibility test. When the instructor asked if I wanted to do it again, as she did with everyone, I declined. For some reason, I didn't want to shine too brightly. And so my failure here would bring equilibrium to reality and leave me in the lackluster state I was before. With this perspective, perfection was not an option, and the only remedy was self inflicted humility.

The other end of the spectrum, of course, would have been to milk my achievement on the track for all it was worth in a narcissistic tirade. Although, more socially acceptable, my response was proably no more healthy. I would have responded well had I done my best yet not let it go to my head. Yet how to attain such balance is the question. Perhaps balance is indicative of wholeness which may be a better goal to strive for than "the highest degree of excellence". It's also probably closer to what Jesus meant in the quote above. "Teleios" is the Greek word used by the New Testament writer here, which carries connotations of completeness, wholeness, maturity. It seems to me then that striving for perfection has at least two possible paths: 1) competition to be the best 2) a healthy and humble walk between extremes.