On perfection(ism)
"It’s a relief that I'm not physically perfect. I don’t want to be sacrificed to the gods." —Irene Meder (my grandmother)
Should we strive for perfection, always challenging ourselves to grow and master our domains, or should we practice radical self-acceptance and understand that there is no improving what is present?
Many of my high-performing students and friends are perfectionists, and they are wonderful humans. Their desire to be better, to grow and thrive, motivates them and helps them to cultivate self-awareness.
They listen to folks like Andrew Huberman to try to optimize their brains and bodies to show up as their happiest, best selves. They study leadership because they want to be the ones at the helm, benevolent and kind leaders who will model a better way. They study mindfulness in a desire to better understand their minds.
They want to write stories that will create bridges of human experience that welcome more empathy and are also beautifully rendered and without flaw.
But what does a student do when they have quirks that do not align with the science of optimization? Perhaps many even have physical characteristics that make impossible the nose-only breathing and green juice diets prescribed by the jiujitsu-practicing, mega-meditating neuroscientists from the Ivys.
What if their personality does not align with the competencies science says are optimal for a leader, or their writing style is not en vogue? What if they are facing traumas from destructive people or experiences in their lives?
It’s heartening to think that all the difficult things and traumas are teachers and said teachers make us stronger. But I can say from experience that some difficulties just slow us down. To think trauma is all part of the training justifies pain and constructs a story around injustice that attempts to minimize its effects.
I’m not saying we should dwell in pain, but we can’t muscle up and say it’s a gift either. Pain is just pain. Injustice sucks. Anything about us that makes us less able to find perfection can feel like a true barrier.
But we are crafty humans who are never stagnant. And pain is also part of a journey. Besides, as my grandmother’s quote suggests, perfection might come with its own unique and dire consequences, so we should love and embrace our flaws and tragic stories. Relish our imperfections, because they are what make us human. Right?
As a child, all I wanted was to fix my teeth. I wrote an essay about this, which won the San Miquel de Allende Prize. I’ll be honored to read it at the conference in a few months (link here). I truly believed that my teeth held me back from a better, more perfect life because they made me look poor or defective. Also, from what my child self saw, a woman’s value was her appearance. Simple but honest thinking, if I do say so myself. One could argue that my teeth didn’t truly matter, my self-love did, but this feels dishonest to me.
I did fix my teeth, and it changed the way I felt about my smile. It also changed the way some (perhaps many) people responded to me when I spoke. To have straight teeth was a relief. It was one less worry.
The definition of perfect is not impossible. It means, after all, “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be” (Oxford Languages). We can desire ourselves exactly as we are and still want to fix what doesn’t sit right.
Perfection is within our grasp if we want to be loyal to this definition. But do we want to be as good as it is possible to be? Perhaps the trick is figuring out what matters to us versus what we’re told matters.
When I work with leadership and writing students alike and I encounter perfection(ism), I try to discourage it. I tell them to mess up gloriously, to make mistakes, and to relish in them.
I advocate for self-acceptance, replete with self-deprecating humor because it is what reminds us that we are not here to rebuild ourselves once we’re built. Instead, we’re here to journey around, to climb mountains and look around, just to see.
Sure, we can fix our teeth and comb our hair. We can appreciate what we see as perfection in others, and we can taste what it is to be our best selves, but we always have to begin again and recognize that ultimately we are on a planet of people who have endured pains and will continue to endure pains. Often unjustified. And individuals cannot all abide by the same rules, no matter how precise science gets.
One thing I am clear about is pain is not what makes a person who they are. Who they are endures despite. Trauma and barriers to wellness or lack of resources are distractions. Merely there. Not unique, to be glorified, to be ignored, or to be placated while on a quest for perfection. Pain simply is. The idea of perfection simply is. The two are at opposite ends of the balance beam, and the fulcrum point is the human.
We are always balancing and trying out new viewpoints, and we are forever ascending or descending something. Physically, mentally, or otherwise.
Perfectionism becomes just another distraction from the idea that we are on a journey here, and perhaps the real lesson is that compassion must be a part of it — more so than justification (or a quest for justice).
Okay, maybe this is my thesis: Compassion is the teacher I want to walk with because it is the only thing I can find that puts both pain and perfection in perspective. It reminds us to look around and appreciate the view, even if we don’t climb to the same heights we thought we might.
And when we can do that no matter our vantage point, we can fix what we want to fix and also see more than the orderliness of a smile.
How do you practice compassion?
Congratulations on your essay and the prize, Jen! I thought you weren’t going to get paid! The part about the Madonna poser was perfect. I didn’t realize my parents lost my birth certificate until my second job because the first one never asked. I don’t know how I made it that far without it.
Jen, thanks for a good essay - I think it might be better had you listed ways you use this technique of acceptance and striving in your own work.