On Being a Jack Pine
The elusive nature of perfection.
“Love life, face it, because good or bad we have no other”. This small frame hung in my dear father’s office at home. After both my parents died it was one of the mementos that I brought home. I keep it on a shelf in one of my bookcases and study it often.
A couple of days ago I was bewildered. Expectations of how things “should be” were not measuring up. I was not communicating well with others. Among other concerns, my doctor was busy at the computer screen. When not doing so, he was talking at me and not listening. He recommended medicine with side effects that I found unacceptable. Later on that day, the news highlighted dysfunction in Congress that I found unsettling.
The next morning I awoke troubled by those thoughts, trying to find my footing. The tune The Best of Times from the movie La Cage Aux Folles began to play in my head. Years ago, we had watched this movie with some very close friends from whom we had moved away due to my career. As I prepared to depart from our visit, I was very sad at having to leave after enjoying such warm moments with them where everything had been beautiful, loving, perfect. Sensing my distress, my friends reminded me of the song from the prior evening. It was an invitation to be in the moment before the uncertainty of everything in life. The imperfection of life.
And what is perfection? The Greek philosophers pondered the metaphysical concept of universals, which are mere idealizations of reality: the “dogness” of a dog, the “chairness” of a chair, and so on. Perfection would then be meeting those idealizations.
The Merriam Webster dictionary has several definitions of perfection, such as “freedom from fault or defect”, “supreme excellence”, and similar. But when I drill down on those phrases, I then need to define “fault”, “defect”, “supreme”, and “excellence”, and that leads me in an endless quest, for each of those terms are human conceptions based on the idea of the perfect.
So, caught in that merry-go-round, this morning I was blessed to stumble upon the daily meditation from CAC, Wholeness Includes Imperfection.
The following quote caught my attention:
Jack pines … are not lumber trees [and they] won’t win many beauty contests either. But to me this valiant old tree, solitary on its own rocky point, is as beautiful as a living thing can be…. In its silence it speaks of … wholeness … an integrity that comes from being what you are. —Douglas Wood, Fawn Island
In the meditation, Parker Palmer quotes from Thomas Merton, and infers that we are so far removed from the truth that we hold within, that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are.”
When I step away from my self-centeredness for a moment, I begin to realize that I am not unique in failing to recognize who I am in my “imperfection”. And that being the case, in my interactions with others I should expect that others are experiencing the same level of distractions and angst as they navigate this environment called life. So, achieving perfect connections with others, and perfect understanding from others, including family, friends, and “medical professionals” is unrealistic— imperfection is a sign of that individual’s uniqueness that is meant to be. All of those with whom we wish to have better communication and understanding are, like us, struggling to portray the “integrity that comes from being what you are” and perhaps hiding insecurities behind screens of professionalism and role-playing that interfere with dialogues.
These reflections on the CAC meditation are my feeble attempts to convey the value that I received. That meditation that should be read, studied, and taken to heart because on re-reading the meditation I see other interwoven themes. I ordered Parker Palmer’s book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, and look forward to diving into his wisdom.
In our uniqueness, quirkiness, and imperfection we are all jack pines in a jack pine forest, and beautifully expressive of a creation that is beyond our comprehension.
This was beautiful, like a Jack Pine.
Thank you. 🙏🏽
I suspect the "Jack" is the introvert among pines ... TY for writing Manuel.