Perfectionism was once a friend of mine…or so I thought. Actually, it was more like the rich Uncle you pretend to love to stay in his good graces to garner that graduation card with the wad of cash tucked inside. And, like that “perfect” relationship, it was a lot of work for virtually no payoff. Perfection is such a joke.
My wake up call was when, for the third time, I had a letter I was attempting to send up to the big boss’s office to get a signature, and it was sent back to me “for corrections”. No, the corrections were not on the letter requiring the signature, but rather for the routing slip that I just couldn’t get the margins lined up and I forgot a period on a sentence and a slash or dash somewhere else. Without getting into mundane detail, the consequences of the delay in signature had a profound effect on someone’s freedom to leave the base that weekend.
After this incident, I started looking at times in my own life where I had expected perfection, only to be sorely disappointed. There were lots of times to choose from, times where I expected perfection from my coworkers, my friends, myself…even my own children. I confess to you now that the revelation of how ridiculous perfection is for any mortal to expect is humbling. And I will tell you something amazing…humility is a warm, cozy blanket compared to the cold harshness of perfectionism.
I’ve come to believe that the expectation of perfection is a veil that cowards hide behind to disguise their insecurities and ignorance. They boast this impossibly high standard to appear as if they are convinced that anything less is unacceptable. Interestingly enough, they grovel in misery over their own perceived inadequacies because they themselves cannot achieve the perfection they impose on everyone else. What a sorrowful existence is theirs. I should know.
Why is “good enough” construed as “barely enough”? I think it’s because too many people are caught up in this ideal that perfection is an acceptable standard. Well, I, for one, am quitting perfectionism cold turkey. It doesn’t mean I will quit having standards altogether, but the best that I or anyone else can do is going to be good enough, and a standard I can accept.
