The Price of Perfection

Aren’t most of us guilty for getting jealous over how perfect other people’s lives seem to be?
I was looking at my old phone’s photos when I saw this image where I was in a pigeon pose. What impressed me was the square-ness of my hips. It wasn’t really a big deal, except that at the time the photo was taken, I was still nursing my left hip injury (pulled hamstring) and a newly acquired knee injury from forcing myself into a lotus pose (another story to learn lesson from).
If I did not know any better, I would have been very proud of the photo. For an alignment-obsessed person like me, a perfectly squared hips in a pigeon pose says a lot about openness of one’s hips. Remembering my state while doing that pose was an entirely different story. I was in pain. It seemed that forever existed for those several seconds that I was in that pose while my co-trainee was inspecting and taking photos. I breathed through the pain. Even though it was a sharp, shooting pain, I stayed still and maintained a calm façade. I did not want anyone to know that I had injuries. I did not want anyone to know that I was in pain. That was the price that I have to pay to maintain a façade of perfection in that particular pose.
This does not only go for yoga poses. It happens to us in an almost day-to-day basis. There are times when we do not feel well yet we try to put up a cheerful façade. We think that everyone leads a perfect life, and so we force ourselves to be okay. This assumption is somewhat fed by our exposure to social media (hello, IG!). In a world where negativity is frowned upon, people usually post positive things. This is not a bad thing. However, it leads us to believe that there are people who seem to lead a charming life, posting all these wonderful things that has happened to them. And it makes you feel bad about yourself, thinking that you too should live a life similar to theirs. Therefore, we sit through the pain, we act as if we are okay. Somehow, subconsciously, we are made to believe that to feel bad is not okay. And we sit in silence, hiding whatever pain we have because feeling sorrow and thinking negatively does not serve you well.
Maintaining appearances, maintaining perfection… what purpose does it serve? And does it serve the purpose in the healthiest way possible? Or does it contribute to more pains as we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge our pain for the sake of convincing not only others, but most importantly ourselves, that we are okay?
What does our pain tell us? Pain is there to tell us that we are not okay, and that it is okay not to be okay. That is part of life — the impermanence of being okay, the impermanence of being not okay.
There is nothing wrong in trying to achieve perfection or to better one’s condition in life. I believe that dissatisfaction is part of human nature, and we can use that dissatisfaction to push us forward. If we are trying to achieve some semblance of perfection, we can still do so without burdening ourselves too much. We can do this by taking one step at a time, maybe accepting that a perfect, squared hips in pigeon pose is something that could be worked on instead of being a source of pain as one attempts to push the body’s boundaries just to get that perfection one wants to achieve immediately.
