The cure to perfectionism is death or at least the thought of it

How contemplating death has the power to change our present struggles

The sound of thin glass shattering rings in my ears. Water pools up on the floor. I turn to glance from the kitchen and see my 2-year old son has managed to knock over a flower vase, brimming with water, onto my wood floors.

As a new homeowner, I have been learning lessons about original wood floors that every homeowner knows: water is my enemy. And as a perfectionist, I’ve been failing my way towards learning how to deal with the imperfections that keep creeping up into my wood floors.

I take a deep breath, remembering to check everyone is safe from the glass. I then begin what I know will ultimately prove to be less successful than I hope: salvaging the wood floors. With the tiny shards of glass everywhere, I can’t quickly come to my floor’s rescue by soaking up the water. This knowledge infuriates me — it’s like I’m watching perfection slip right out of my hands.

I am what I like to call a “recovering perfectionist,” which is to say someone who very much wants perfection in their life but is coping with the reality that it’s unattainable. And I have been seeking a cure to it for decades.

In a rare moment of clarity, amidst my water-soaked wood floors, I think I found it: death. Not my death, although that may certainly free me I presume, but the thought of death.

I have tried so many tips, tricks, and cures to cope with my constant desire to seek perfection. Deep breathing, mindfulness, a focus on the reality that everything in this world is temporary or that this one thing ultimately doesn’t matter that much. None of it seems to work. I am still left to sit with the discomfort and near rage of my inability to tolerate imperfection.

But this night, I take a deep breath and think of something new. I think to myself, “if my son were suddenly gone, taken away from me by death, how would I feel about these water-stained floors?”

I stop myself in my own tracks with this thought. I immediately know the answer. Each time I pass these imperfect floorboards or run my hands across their no longer smooth edges, I would cry because I would miss him. I would even miss the moments where his mischievous little self knocked stuff around and ruined my floors.

This idea didn’t come to me on my own. Death and the thought of it is often on my mind, as a side effect of my profession. I’m a professor and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center where I focus on supporting terminally ill patients and their families as they walk through the process of dying and grief. And so, the thought of death is constantly on my mind.

Through this work, I once heard a story of a family who lost their young son to cancer. They talked about how he used to constantly slam their back porch screen door, and they hated it. But once he was gone, every time it slammed, their eyes welled up with tears. They missed him, door slams and all.

What moves me most in contemplating death is not necessarily reminding myself that my son could, in fact, be gone at any moment. That’s too distressing of a thought. It’s the striking reality that love is all that remains on both this side and the other side of death. Everything else gets stripped away. Even the imperfections in life caused by ourselves and those around us have the potential to leave only marks of love in their absence.

To be clear, I’m not talking about flaws or imperfections that cause harm like abuse. Rather, I’m talking about those little nagging things in life that steal our joy in the day-to-day, but that honestly might create a sense of joy or at least love in quiet remembrance once that person is gone.

It’s a fascinating lesson to try to learn how to tolerate and ultimately cope with your own desire for perfectionism. And by fascinating, I mean utterly infuriating. I can’t quite put my finger on why these imperfect wood floors get to me so much. Maybe it’s because they remind me that everything is temporary, especially the perfect or seemingly perfect. Maybe it’s because they force me to face the reality that I’m incapable of creating or keeping perfect things. I am not in control. Maybe it’s because I worry about how this will affect my home’s future value or because I just can’t stand seeing things look wrecked.

Either way, it’s hard. But contemplating the greater reality of death, and in that contemplation life, is slowly helping me get there.

Don’t get me wrong — I still completely hate my floors having water-stained marks. But I know, somewhere in there, is life being lived. Messy, imperfect, but full of love.

Megan Shen is a social psychologist, communication researcher, and Associate Professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. She is a leading expert on death, dying, grief, and hope. Follow her on Twitter @MeganJShenPhD