Waiting for Perfect
…or the risky pursuit of life
When I was about 9 my parents (or maybe it was Santa…) gave me a Rock Tumbler for Christmas. ‘What is a Rock Tumbler?’ you ask. While not really relevant to the story, let me tell you it’s what all Umbro-windshorts-wearing-tomboys would want. (And if you are really that curious, Amazon can describe the rest…)
I was completely thrilled with the Rock Tumbler… seriously (see tomboy reference above). So thrilled in fact that I put it on the shelf and never once used it. I was waiting for the perfect day, the perfect project. Which never came. There’s delayed gratification and then there’s just letting life pass you by.
Over recent years, I’ve begun to see a trend of ‘rock tumblers’ in my life. The things I am most enlivened by and excited to experience — articles to read, restaurants to try, relationships to pursue — I don’t. I put them on the shelf, waiting for the perfect moment.
You see, I’m a recovering perfectionist. And yes, I’m well-aware how annoying that sounds. Like when asked in an interview, what is your greatest weakness and someone (not me, clearly) responds ‘perfectionism’. What the interviewer hears is “The only answer I can possibly come up with is my glaring perfection that is so perfect it makes everyone else uncomfortable.” While what the interviewee (again not me, obviously) is trying to say is, “My paralyzing fear of failure. Because what I am abundantly aware of is that I fall quite far from being perfect but expect perfection and find myself constantly face-to-face with that discrepancy.”
So this is my experiment. Joining Medium. Not just staying the consumer of content. But joining. Joining and writing. For a serial passive observer that is a start.
Because this is what I’m learning
- We can think a lot more clearly, and creatively, if we’re not always trying to get it right.
- What makes life good is the journey, not the destination. The process of creating — even more than the creation.
- Go. Do. Live. If we are actively engaging in life, creative expressions will be the natural by-product. And people won’t have to worry nearly as much about things like what they are going to Instagram or ‘content creation’.
- It seems riskier to pursue what you care about. To risk failure. But if you never try then failure is a certainty.
- And back to the Rock Tumbler. Don’t shelve what is most important to you. Don’t let life happen to you. Take ownership of the pieces you can control.
Helping my parents pack up to move houses 15 years later, we came across the Rock Tumbler. I told my mom how excited I had been about it and her response: She thought I hated it. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she? I put it on the shelf and never touched it.
As much as we’d like to believe we are the person we see ourselves to be because we know our own thoughts, aspirations, goals and joys. How can the rest of the world know if we sit on the shelf afraid of failing?
“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them…
…Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is an encounter with God and with eternity.” — The Alchemist
