Perfect...A bad thing? Surely not!

In the midst of winding down after a hectic shift at work, I remembered something I read a while ago from Perfecting Ourselves to Death. This was written in relation to Lexus:

"Relentless pursuit of perfection. The only thing car experts fond to criticize is that is is so smooth, quiet & perfect....it lacks soul"

This excerpt is from Chp 1, which means that I read it sometime last year and I didn't think much about it nor have I re-read that chapter ever again.

So here I am on a muggy Saturday afternoon, tired and hot, contemplating this little excerpt. I'm thinking..."I guess I've never thought about perfection from that angle before". It does make sense though.

When you start off learning something or doing something for the first time, you have to use brain power, initiative, effort and sometimes passion during the process to produce the end result. Once you've mastered the technique, it becomes routine and possibly a habit, there is no need effort or brain power. And I guess that's when the lack of soul may develop.

Which brings me to consider...the many things we put into place in our daily lives to better our walk with the Lord and become more like Him puts us in a position where we can easily do it just for the sake of doing it. We may start off full of excitement, hunger and determination but there is always a danger of what we do becoming meaningless, empty gestures.

So another area in life that I thought might be affected by perfectionism is my cooking. Sometimes I do cook just for the sake of cooking, worry excessively about the minor details that I totally lose touch with what I am actually meant to do and that is not a good thing especially when I'm on chow duty. I have to constantly remind myself why I am serving and to remember to put passion and love into what I do.

Like most things there is a positive and negative and there is a very fine line between the two. SO the challenge is to make sure that the line is never crossed...