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The Joy of Imperfection
It's summertime – is the living easy yet? Stress all
gone? Not yet? Not surprising. As the
Buddhists say (pardon my paraphrase): if you're born
a human, then you've got stress – no exceptions.
Luckily, many folks manage life's normal level of
stressful ups and downs with some measure of acceptance.
There is a particular kind of stress, though, which many
people experience, that can be subtle and which often goes
unidentified: the stress of having to be Perfect.
That's Perfect with a capital P.
We can all be a bit perfectionistic at times, but "capital
P" Perfectionists are more extreme. It's not just
that they are unduly frustrated by flaws, weaknesses,
vulnerabilities, and - heaven forbid - mistakes.
It's that good isn't good enough, great isn't good enough,
and even excellent isn't good enough. Nothing is
good enough, and someone always has to be blamed for that.
Perfectionists have a rigid expectation of their own
Perfection, and a tendency to devalue their own
achievements, no matter how considerable. They
alternate between being judgmental of others, and of
themselves. For the Perfectionist, being "good
enough" is a cop-out, a lazy person's excuse for not
trying hard enough. The result of this attitude is
not greater productivity: it's exhaustion.
Like Sisyphus, they feel like they're always pushing a
boulder up a hill – or they make the people around them
feel that way.
Perfectionists can't stop judging, and it is always the
same verdict: "Guilty of not being good enough."
In my view, unless you're being paid to be a judge, or
unless you're a criminal, then you should not be living in
a courtroom, where someone is always being accused, put on
trial, condemned, sentenced and punished. Contrary
to the Perfectionist's beliefs, conscious or unconscious,
imperfection is not a crime, and neither is it a sin.
For some who drink or drug too much, their substance abuse
can be a way of shutting up the accusatory voice of their
inner slave driver - the inner task master that never
stops judging. Their drug of choice provides some
relief, but only temporarily, of course, and at much too
great a cost.
I once worked with a gifted and intelligent man, whose
life seemed charmed to those who knew him socially, but
who was grinding himself down with his relentless
self-criticism. I asked him, even though I knew what
his answer would be, "What if you won the Nobel Prize?
Then would you be good enough?" We both agreed that,
Nobel in hand, he'd still find a way to trash himself.
I am pretty convinced that, in spite of our imperfections,
we all have the right to feel that we are basically good
enough – to live, to love and be loved. I hope he
came to feel that way, too.
So it's summer. Time to bask in the joy of
imperfection. If you're having a summer vacation
this year, see if you can make it a break from the
constant stress of Perfectionism. Appreciating and
enjoying what is good enough, in one's self and in others,
while knowing that nothing is ever Perfect, is actually a
vacation from stress that you can take any time, any
place.
© Daniel Shaw 2007
dan@danielshawlcsw.com
http://www.danielshawlcsw.com |
