Karate Kid Nailing Perfection (Blurb)

One of my most simplest of dreams as a kid after seeing the movie "Karate Kid" is not quite the thing one would expect from a movie where the uber nerd gets to beat up his bully in the end to be.  I desperately want to be able to hit a nail with a hammer and within ONE hit have it sink to it's head.  Yup, pure awesomeness that would be.

Pure perfection

I would practices this majestic art anytime I was doing work around my childhood home.  Each time I would go to hammer a nail I would give it a tap, tap to set it steady.. rear back for a magnificent blow.. and send home the hammer to nail head.. bending that bad boy pretty much in half mostly every time.  I would not stop at one try though, I would do it a few times for each time I had to hammer in a nail.  The only thing I would come out of these ordeal with was several bent and useless nails.  

What I never really saw then. hindsight is revealing to me. is one of the problems of perfection. While perfection is a noble goal and only practice can get one to perfection, it leaves you with many destroyed items in it's seeking.  There are times when it is acceptable and encouraged to bring yourself to a place of greatness, there is also the avenue of never moving on because of all of the failures.

So many nails wasted when the job my have required only a few... all in the pursuit of perfection.  My real thought here is about people, other people.  We may be able to create mistakes ourselves and be able to deal with them and move on, but what about when you slam the hammer down on another person and instead of hitting them home, making them immediately the best at what they do, you have bent them over and made them useless for the job they intended to do.

Yes, your heart may have been in the right place.  Seeking perfection and believing they could attain it, but was your method of imparting that to them the proper one?  

I have long, and I hope always, been of the mindset that ALL can do well in life with just encouragement and the right drive.  For those I have seen grasp hold of life in a way defying the world's cry for, "THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE!", have held firm in who they are and what they believe no matter the shaking of the mantle below them. This, no matter what, is what I have begun to truly see as perfection.  You may not be able to sink the nail in one hit, but you will most certainly finish building the house.  

Much like it says in Hebrews...

Hebrews 12:1

Amplified Bible (AMP)

Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,

Have you every hurt someone in the pursuit of perfection?

 

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