The Ideal Person

By Johannes Helmold

Each individual has his or her own idea of who an ideal person is. In the context of this essay, the aspects of this person would follow his or her character or personality, rather than their situation, money, age, and other mundane particulars. We often hold up people such as Jesus, Buddha, Prophet Muhammad, Mother Mary, and other pivotal figures of history as examples of ideal people. However, how often do we stop and reflect about who this person is in terms of our own perspective? Perfection is more abstract, and an ideal is more objective; so, that is why I have not used the word “perfect.” Anyways, the ideal person to you should be the way you would want to be in regard to character or personality.

In reflecting upon this topic for a few days, I came up with the following list of characteristics:

After I described this state, I felt that everything else I stated was either an incorporation of it, or not possible through the act of pure witnessing. However, to safeguard that this person does not do any evil, here are more qualities to consider:

After writing down these seven qualities, my brain could not come up with anything else. But, I can tell why the six additional characteristics are important.

For the second quality, I believe forgiveness is essential to having a clear mind and conscience. If we hold grudges against people, we not only disrupt our relationship with them, we also cause ourselves to be emotionally hurt. We often make mistakes as well, and being able to forgive ourselves is key to having a healthy relationship with what we consider to be us.

The third one is not the easiest to define, but I think that being constructive is not causing any harm to anyone—including ourselves. It seems if everyone abided by this rule, the world would quickly become a flourishing place. We often do destructive actions without knowing or pondering over them. Unfortunately, many cause suffering for others and themselves knowingly.

Innocence is also not simple to define, but it can also relate to not intentionally being of harm and also expressing child-like qualities. People respect children and love them for their attributes of innocence and simplicity. It is not the same as ignorance, but rather a sweetness, wonder, and joy.

When we think of people like Jesus and Buddha, we commonly picture them as always being compassionate and loving. Though this might sound like a hippy philosophy, I think it is an essential quality of an ideal person. Harboring hate and anger towards another person would taint an ideal individual’s mind.

Having a healthy body and mind seems like common sense aspects to list, but when people think of prophets and such people, they often do not think of mundane qualities such as this. Though the ideal person would always be in the witness state, he or she would take care that his or her body is clean and that his or her mind is clear of disorder.

Lastly, this great individual should always be at peace with himself or herself, and with others, as there should not be any negative reaction to what others say or do. Being content with oneself is also essential to being ideal, in my opinion.

We all have our own concepts about who an ideal person would be if we were left to our own devices. I have tried my best to ponder about this individual, and write what seemed most true. I hope it has been useful and inspiring to read.

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