practical inquiry regarding meaning » value » the good (in itself) / intrinsically valuable
The goal here is perfection. What counts as perfection for a particular thing will depend on that thing. A perfect piano solo, for example, involves the player, sequence of notes played, piano, audience, environment in which the piece is performed, and so on, and there can be as many perfect piano solos as there are piano solos. All will fall short of perfection, but all can strive toward perfection.
Similarly, human lives can be perfect, and that doesn't mean there's one perfect life for all humans. There can be as many perfect human lives as there are humans. Of course, all will fall short, but perfection is simply the generalized term for what each of us aims for. Yet this evokes the question, are there general features of what we all aim for? If there are, we can't assume that most of us recognize those features. We can aim for things without being able to clearly articulate the nature of that toward which we are aiming. Here's an attempt to articulate them:
We aim to dynamically reconcile our ordered lives with chaos—to make friends with chance—where the reconcilation is an ever-present, ever-changing, ever-fluid moment of spontaneity, accompanied by a feeling of being most alive. There are no reasons for this. There are no explanations. It outruns the need for reasons and explanations. It transcends them. Perfection lives in chance/chaos, where anything is possible, even as it brings with it the ordered pattern of our lives. It places this pattern in chaos, and in that chaos the order finds its home.
This is all sounding very esoteric. What has this got to do with practical activity? Improvisation. We can practice improvisation. Improvisation leaves no man behind. It says yes to any experience and looks for ways to weave it into a new narrative. The narrative is always changing, yet there is a through-line. There is a rhythm to ride—the rhythm of chance. It's paradoxical to see order in chaos and chaos in order, but that is what we practice when we seek the pure spontaneity of improvisation that keeps the rhythm of chance.
And how do we practice improvisation? It helps to have trusted sparring partners, each with the commitment to "leave no man behind" and to extend the benefit of the doubt to each other. So-called "mistakes" are seen as opportunities to tell a new tale. As there will be no end to mistakes, there will be no end to the newness of the tales we tell, but the through-line will be maintained. When the through-line is chance, perfection makes its appearance, transcending reason and explanation, reconciling order and chaos. Of course, trusted sparring partners are hard to find, and this is because trust begets trust. If one hasn't been exposed to trusting individuals, one will not likely have learned how to be trusting or trustworthy. This feedback loop also sheds insight regarding that which is valuable in itself. The in itself character is linked to this notion of a self-contained, self-generating feedback loop.
Practically speaking, all of this occurs only when we keep an eye on what lies beyond our understanding. Some call this faith, but it's a radical faith—a faith that has nothing reasonable to fall back on. It's faith in randomness, chance, chaos. Practically, we can prepare ourselves to let everything go, and we must choose to let go in the absence of any reason why.
