Went to see Tron the other night and loved every bit of it. The movie’s a great crossroads of technology and spirituality – my two favorite subjects. The premise, to sum it up, is about people from our world getting trapped inside a computer program – a digital world. The original story was written 30 years ago by a computer scientist who was highly influential in the Silicon Valley, working for Hewlett Packard at the time.
So how does spirituality play in? It’s all about seeking perfection. If you think about it, computers are designed for perfection (though they often fall very short of the goal). It’s well known that computers don’t make mistakes, the people who design them do – in short, computers are nearly perfect. Think about how hard we strive for perfection in our daily lives. We strive to look perfect, to dress perfect, to have the perfect abode, the perfect transportation, the perfect job, the perfect friends, lovers, parents, siblings, children, our finances in perfect order. Computers and technology are the new tools to help us arrive at this perfect life, perfect future – they promise us more efficiency, less errors, and promise us more time. We put our faith into them believing they will eventually get us to this perfect world without errors. In truth, though, the more things change, the more things stay the same. In truth, errors are integral to perfection.
The Universe is the great equalizer – all things must be balanced – yin and yang. As our technology develops and we think ourselves just on the brink of perfection, we find catastrophic errors which throw us humbly back into balance. The recent stock market bubble was caused by perfectly executed financial software which was based on imperfectly written code which failed to take into account vital factors and lead Wall Street to take greater risks than should have been taken. The software did the job it was written to do perfectly, but the humans using it abused it. Imperfection?
What is perfection? What does that mean? Is perfection equal to things going right while imperfection is equal to things going wrong? Then who decides what is right and what is wrong – and according to whose point of view?
In Tron, Jeff Bridges’ character, believes a perfect utopia can be created in the digital world – which of all the environments to do it, sounds the most promising considering computers can’t make mistakes. Instead, he creates hell – a common theme both in literature and in history. His character soon is hit by an important realization that many of us miss in the real world: in fact, perfection is already in our midst, we just aren’t paying attention to reality.
Our world is actual perfect right now, as it is. How can this be so? Because the Universe is and always must be in constant balance. As you begin to look at what you think is imperfection, and are willing to question your pre-existing points of view, you may begin to realize too that perfection is all around you. Most importantly, you may find that everything you thought was imperfect about you, is actually nothing less than perfect.
Lao Tzu writes in the Tao:
If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
(22)
Only when you open to imperfection, can you witness true perfection. Only when you open to the crooked, can you embody the straight. Only when accept yourself to be incomplete, can you realize yourself as complete. Continue to judge yourself for not being ‘perfect’ and you will keep working towards a hopeless dream that can never come true. Continue to love yourself, your ‘imperfections,’ and you will see nothing less than perfection.
