I’ve been thinking a lot about my idea of perfection lately, and so I went to the Online Etymology Dictionary to see if the ‘flawless’ meaning that is common today was the original one.
You’ll find the entry for ‘perfection’ here, the entry for ‘complete’ here, and the entry for ‘flaw’ here.
It seems the flawless sense of the word came up in the 14th century.
From late 14c. as “flawlessness, correctness, purity,” also “act of making perfect,” also “state of being complete.” The meaning “quality, endowment, or acquirement characterized by excellence or great worth or value” is from 1570s.
However, the earlier meaning of perfection was more about completeness.
early 13c., perfeccioun, “consummate state or form, that degree of excellence which leaves nothing to be desired,”…
…from Old French perfection “perfection, completeness” (12c.)…
…from Latin perfectionem (nominative perfectio) “a finishing, completing, perfection,”…
I looked up the meaning of ‘complete’ next. The meaning hasn’t changed much over time. It did have a bit more of the sense of ‘full’ before. Here is an excerpt from the Etymonline entry.
…from Old French complet “full,” or directly from Latin completus, past participle of complere “to fill up, complete the number of (a legion, etc.),” …
One of the hardest things for me to understand is what so many different spirituality teachers say. They say that each one of us is already perfect. But I was thinking of perfect as in the ‘without flaws’ meaning of the word. It didn’t make sense for me to look at myself as without flaws when I could see different areas that I wanted to improve or grow in. How could I say I was without flaws when I snapped at someone? How could I say I was without flaws when I judged others harshly? How could I say that I was without flaws when I was not yet the person I wanted to be?
I suppose that I need to look at my beliefs around flaws, but setting that aside for the moment and looking at ‘perfection’ as ‘completeness’ makes more sense to me. I am complete now as I am. But that doesn’t mean I can’t become more. One brick is complete in and of itself, but you could combine it with other bricks to make a wall. That wall is complete in and of itself, but you could add more bricks to make it higher, or combine it with other walls to make a house. That house can then be combined with other houses to form a neighbourhood, and then a town, and so on.
Back to the word ‘flaw’ now. This word had a drastic change in meaning, with the meaning that we use today only coming about in the 16th century. Here are a couple of excerpts from the entry for ‘flaw’, the first being the older meaning of the word.
early 14c., “a flake” (of snow), also in Middle English “a spark of fire; a splinter,” from Old Norse flaga “stone slab, layer of stone” (see flag (n.2))…
Sense of “defect, fault” first recorded 1580s, first of character, later (c. 1600) of material things; probably via notion of a “fragment” broken off.
What a difference! ‘Flaw’ used to mean a tiny part of a whole, like a single snowflake or a spark from a fire.
Looking at ‘perfection’ as completeness and ‘flaw’ as one tiny part of that completeness, which is still complete in and of itself, makes so much sense to me. And each flaw is perfect and will in turn have flaws (neighbourhood, house, wall, brick).
The negative connotations with the word ‘flaw’ have dropped away for me now. I am perfect. I am a flaw. I have flaws. Sure, there are small parts of me that are unkind, judgemental, but when they are integrated into the whole they will build something greater. Without those fragments I would be incomplete, the same way that a wall missing two or three bricks would be incomplete.
Looking at the older meanings of ‘perfection’ and “flaw” and how they fit together aligns beautifully with my beliefs about our Universe. That we are each individuals having our unique experience but that ultimately we are all part of the whole. We are flaws of a perfect Universe. We are all One.