Humanity: the Strive for Perfection Essay Example

and gyms as much as possible? Why do you think people spend long periods of time fiddling with their hair and painting their faces with make-up? Yes, this is all because of perfection: their struggles of achieving it. People have always wanted to have a beautiful face, perfect body shape, and fair skin complexion – all of these at once, and they are ready to pay any price. Just a little hair that grew out of place or a pimple on the face that came uninvited – it would be considered as a flaw and they would be itching to get rid of it at once.

But why does perfection make this great impact on our lives? Have you ever stopped and wondered why are we so crazy on making ourselves look good? With the prying and judging eyes scattered everywhere, being self-conscious is almost natural. This is one of the reasons why we push ourselves as far as we can to reach perfection: the fear of being judged. We are so self-conscious that the thoughts of other people on us – admit it or not – are our top concerns. Especially if we are meeting a person for the first time; we do our best to groom and dress ourselves to impress, right?

And also – admit it too or not – we start criticizing people from the very first glance, from the very moment our eyes laid upon their presence. Because of this, most of the people spend a large share of their time styling their hair until they think it passes the standards of society. We also pick the best

shirt just to leave a good first impression; because most of the time, this is the basis on where people would categorize you – just like how taxonomists group animals. Wear anything less than acceptable; then congratulations – you blew up your chance of having a new friend.

Society has these little boxes where they put different people in, depending on the standards they have set – if you luckily pass them. I admit that I do this to people I meet on the streets but without saying it out loud, of course. Like when I see girls wearing very short skirts, I automatically put them in the “slut-box”. And when I see boys wearing formal suits, I instinctively put them in the “rich-box”. And there also some other people who put boys who they think move weakly and lamely in the “gay-box”, even though it is not those boys’ fault they are like that.

So we, afraid of being put in the wrong box by people and of having wrong first impressions, try our best to look as pleasing as possible. Look in the mirror. Examine every feature of the person looking straight back at you. Describe his face, his body, and his stature. Do you find it pretty or horrifically terrible? If you picked the former, then good for you, pat yourself on the back; if not, then unfortunately, you have a low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is another reason why people intensely strive for perfection.

They are not confident with their appearances that they still look for numerous ways to improve their features. According to studies in psychology, people tend

to move in the direction opposite to the course they want to avoid the most (Radwan, Know Myself). In simpler terms, people strive for perfection because they do not feel perfect; they are not satisfied with the way their faces and curves appear. They feel inferior to others that they do everything just to feel good about their selves, and that is to attain perfection as close as possible.

And feeling good about yourself increases your confidence and sense of worth greatly which would cause a glow of pride and satisfaction radiate from your body; and that shining aura of yours would astonish the people around you, making you more respectable than before. Just like in my own experiences, people noticed that I look more confident and happier now when I smile than before I got my braces. My upper teeth were so far from each other like they had some grudges from the past that I did not know of, so it was sometimes really embarrassing to smile while possessing those teeth.

There is also my mother who actually bought a fake tooth worth more than P30, 000 just to show a complete set of teeth for her confident smiles. And also people who are ashamed of their bodies actually do extensive activities just to achieve the perfection they want. Men give most of their time bulking up their muscles in gyms; or if they are desperate enough, they inject anabolic steroids to hasten up the process. Women, on the other hand, go to beauty salons and cosmetic surgeons to enhance every nook and cranny of their structures.

They paint their

nails, put on heavy make-up, cut their hair to perfection, enlarge their breasts and buttocks, wax other unwanted hairs, and take Glutathione. There also others, especially super models, who starve themselves just not to gain weight and maintain their skinny figures. People all do this just to feel good about their selves so that the next time they go out, they would not shy away from the crowd. Mass media contributes largely to our knowledge about the world, and showbiz news is one of those.

Latest gossips about actresses having a nose lift, new magazines released with the photo of a hot actor on the cover, and fresh tips of actresses on how to look like them: they are all contributors on why people want perfection. They have instinctively set those models and superstars that they idolize as the standard for perfection. Because people think that these celebrities are all dazzling with glory and have “perfection” written all over their faces – they all wish to have their gorgeous faces and their glorious curves placed on their bodies too. And dreaming of having the exact copy of Emma Watson’s face and making it their wn is on the top of the list. The reasons mentioned above are the causes why while you were walking down the road of life, you see people at the crossroads choosing the path to perfection among the other paths. But just like all things, there are equivalent effects on selecting this route; may it be positive or negative. Confidence is one of its core positive effects and confidence means feeling good about your own lovely self. If you feel

so good about yourself and your appearance which caused you to believe that nobody could turn you down, then that would be a great boost to your charisma.

And because of this charisma, you suddenly now have a number of secret admirers and fan clubs lurking around and stalking your every move. Actually, what I meant here is that society accepts you now more and the people criticizing you lessened in population. Your level of satisfaction on your own body heightened as you feel the sense of belongingness. Getting noticed is something people desires, don’t you think? We all want to be accepted; and through confidence at oneself, you will get the attention you want. Just what Newton’s third law of motion states: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

If there is a positive, then there is a negative. It is true that you cannot have it all; there would always be a downside in everything. But there is nothing really wrong for striving for perfection; in fact, it gives us benefits. It makes us set ourselves into a goal – a goal that would make us feel we have a purpose in life. But what makes it bad is that there are some people who have tendencies to overdo it – they start to obsess and become dependent to it that if they fail, it would cause a great emotional stress to them. And because the brain is our body’s main controller, emotional stress would really be a huge problem.

And this would cause a domino effect of negativities to happen which is certainly not good. But

wait, there is more; if you think emotional stress is the only downside of obsessing over perfection, think again. Obsessing over perfection is the primary root of the evils of perfection. Why? One cause would be because we start to mess with nature and try every cosmetic product and surgery we lay our hands on. And because these chemicals are forcibly stuffed in our bodies and are not really part of our natural anatomies, they cause various side effects to us and some of these are very damaging.

Patients commonly experience headaches, nausea, and inflammation around the operated area. And there are also patients who instantly die on the operating table, experience allergies, and suffer multiple organ failure after the procedure. Even though they only occur in small number of cases, they are still something to consider (Eblin, eHow). The second cause is emotional stress. Being overly-attached to the notion of attaining perfection would be very dangerous to our mental health. If you think you get respect because of your “perfect” looks, well, that would be a bad way of thinking.

Just one mistake and pimple that grew on your face would make a drastic change on your mood for weeks which would affect your work and the way you live your life. And if you suddenly decided on comparing yourself and copied every diet and exercise tips of your favorite celebrity, then stop right now; you will just get disappointed and realize you wasted all your money and effort because you assumed too much that they are the gods and goddesses of perfection. Also, most of their faces on photos are just

edited to suit the tastes of the public (Dussault, 2009).

Studies also show that a high percentage of the people who commit suicide undergone cosmetic surgeries. But the connection between suicides and cosmetic surgeries has not been proven yet (Singer, 2007). Nevertheless, this is still an important matter to ponder on – is obsession over perfection enough to take your own life away? Perfection is something we all desire, but we should always remember: whatever reason that drives us to pursue this, we should always know our limits, know how far we should go – for it may be too late before we realize that we have abused ourselves already.