It is good to be touched by perfection even if one is the victim of it. I can well understand the story about Malcolm Nash, the man whom Gary Sobers hit for a world record six sixes in a single over. Sobers tells how as they walked off the field after play Nash didn’t seem at all upset, in fact the very opposite. When Sobers expressed surprise at this, Malcolm Nash replied with a smile: “But, Gary, now I’ll go down in the history books too!” Nash knew what he was talking about. Genius rubs off and leaves a glow on anyone who happens to be around to be its handmaiden or even just its witness.
If you have been watching Tiger Woods in the last few months consider yourself fortunate in observing one of the very greatest sportsmen who has ever lived performing at a marvelous level approaching perfection. And yet he speaks of weaknesses still to correct and failings from which he must work hard to rid his game. He will never be satisfied. Even a slightly bad shot is a mortal sin to be confessed to his inner priest with the promise to do hard penance for redemption on the practice course. I love watching Tiger Woods as I loved watching Roger Federer and once loved beyond measure watching the immortal Michael Jordan.
There is in anyone really great a searching after some ultimate in achievement. In life it is exceedingly rare to come across anyone for whom only the ultimate will do. How many of us knows even one person who has wholeheartedly pursued perfection? I think I have known two such people in my life so far and consider myself privileged for that.
Nearly every one of us is quite content with whatever ordinary small successes we are able to achieve in life without too much sweat, risk, or expenditure of time and effort. Perfection isn’t achieved like that. Not even geniuses can perfect their gift without the most terrible sacrifices and agony of mind and soul and body. The end-product of genius looks as simple as a bird in flight but what has led up to it are countless dedicated hours of painful straining towards perfection. What drives on the great champion and the genius is what drove on the pilgrims in James Elroy Flecker’s play:
“We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery lusts are fanned;
For love of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand”
Such a search for perfection must involve an element of fanaticism. There are some strange examples of it. For instance there was Mr. David Schummy. He was the greatest boomerang thrower the world has ever known. Through endless assiduous practice he learned to keep a boomerang in the air before it returned to his hand longer than anyone else ever has. Out of all the billions of people in the world he became by far the best boomerang thrower.
Then there is the famous case of a simple postman in France called Francois Cheval. Gradually over a period of 40 years he constructed a miniature palace in his backyard out of small stones he collected while doing his daily postman’s rounds. That small palace, every bit built by his humble postman’s hands, is not great architecture or anything like that yet it now attracts thousands of visitors. It has become a small shrine, a minor monument testifying to the dream of perfection which every human being dreams in some form or other but only a very, very few actually try to achieve in their waking hours.
It is easy to scoff at the boomerang man or postman Cheval or even at great sportsmen and say that their achievements are after all of minor, peripheral significance in this world of grave and serious matters. But in the final analysis such people know a secret that eludes the rest of us. By devoting their lives to a single aim they have done something more than can be measured by just their achievements. They have felt what it is like to be touched by perfection. Just, it is true, a fleeting feeling since perfection embraces with its whole heart, I believe, only the great artist, the great musician, the great writer, the great mystic. But even to come close enough to touch perfection, however lightly, is something that takes more time, energy, determination and devotion than you or I will ever have.
All of us at times take the Road to Samarkand in our dreams. But when we wake we mostly waste our time. Those rare few who, waking, take that path towards perfection we should honour for they let us glimpse in the flesh, at least briefly, the Golden City which once seen or sensed can never be forgotten.
