The Lie of Perfectionism

¹I’ve struggled with perfectionism for most of my life but I had a pretty seismic shift in my understanding and I’d like to share a little bit of it. So, I’ve always kind of intuitively known that perfectionism is a fool’s quest because I’m an imperfect being and perfection can’t really spring from an imperfect source. When you’re constantly measuring your efforts against some perfection in your mind, you’re destined to disappointment and misery since you can’t make perfect things with imperfect understanding and imperfect abilities. So, all of this I’ve sort of understood on a logical or intellectual level, even if it doesn’t really stand up to the raw fear and emotional turmoil that chasing perfection can generate. But the thing that really rocked my whole outlook is coming to the realization that this “perfection” I’ve always been chasing isn’t even really all that perfect. You see, perfectionism is a lie. Of course I can’t achieve perfection out in the real world with my imperfect body, but why on earth would I ever believe that I can imagine real perfection with my imperfect mind? The “perfect” that I imagine has little to nothing to do with the real, bona fide PERFECT. So in the end, it doesn’t even matter if I can’t execute the “perfect” vision I have in my head because that isn’t the real PERFECT. In fact, even if I somehow had the capacity to perfectly execute the “perfect” in my head, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the results. After all, Hitler and Stalin had the means and the capabilities to make real the “perfect” they had in their heads and ended up causing more death and destruction and misery than almost anyone else that has ever lived. We shouldn’t try to be perfectionists not just because we will always fall short, but also because our “perfect” isn’t even all that perfect to begin with. It’s like, if you’ve got a picture in your head that you want to draw, but you try to draw it and it looks nothing like what you imagined, but then you keep drawing and improving your skills and one day you find that the pictures you’re drawing now are way better than that imaginary “perfect” picture you had thought up so long ago. None of this is to imply that imagination or the “perfect” that we dream up is completely without value. It just shouldn’t be the end goal. We are supposed to take our visions and try to create them in the real world, and the real world is going to push back in all sorts of ways that reveal the flaws in our visions. Some of these pushbacks are going to hurt and they’re going to make us want to give up and quit. But if we take our failures and we incorporate them into our “perfect”, then we synthesize a new “perfect” that we can go out into the world and make all sorts of new failures and improvements and over time, the visions in our head will have a positive impact on the world, and the world will have a positive impact on the visions in our head, and together we and the world will become a little more PERFECT.