It is said that perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect has certainly been my enemy for as long as I can remember. I don’t mean to digress two sentences into this, but did I just mathematically prove that I am the embodiment of all that is good?
perfect = enemy of good
perfect = enemy of me
good = me
While I wait for FedEx to drop off my Nobel Peace Prize (both for my advances in mathematical theory with this breakthrough tautology and for being good), let me try to describe my experiences with perfection a little bit more.
I like to blame it all on Pokémon. “I want to be the very best, like no one ever was.” played the catchy theme song every Saturday morning as a nation full of impressionable young children watched in awe. I remember loving that sentence and adopting it as my own personal credo. I’m sure many other poor souls, whether consciously or subconsciously, did so as well. Forgiving the blatant impossibility of millions of children all deciding that it was their goal to become the single greatest person there ever was, this romantic idea is actually very dangerous. (Maybe it wasn’t all Pokémon’s fault, but as a kid I remember seeing this idea everywhere. Including all those first person role-playing video games where I was supposed to rise to greatness, otherwise: Game Over.)
How can such a timeless idea be so dangerous? After all, you only need to look to history, legend, and folklore to see the tremendous human affinity for greatness. We only sing songs and write ballads about the great heroes that overcome odds and rise to greatness. We exaggerate their strengths and conveniently forget their weaknesses. But what about that one guy who fought in the battle kind of stiffly because he was still a little bit constipated from yesterday and therefore couldn’t dexterously dodge that easily avoidable first arrow that was fired on Day 1 of the heroic month-long siege, taking it straight in the nuts, a thrill that was finally enough to cure his constipation, as he passed away slowly covered in blood and excrement. Nope, we never hear about that guy.
And that is exactly the problem. We are constantly fed this black-and-white idea of greatness or obsoleteness. Greatness or nothingness. Greatness or failure. And then on top of that we are told that greatness is possible, and if not it’s because we’re not trying hard enough. So we all mumble, scratch our heads, shrug our shoulders, and continue on our merry ways to become this enigmatic embodiment of greatness.
Once you fall into the trap that greatness is possible you have two places to go. You could either fool yourself into believing that you have achieved this pinnacle of godly achievement and are the embodiment of all that is great, or you could realize that no matter what you keep trying and achieving, you never quite feel “great” and so you keep on trying and trying and trying, chasing after the carrot, trying to finally achieve this sense of completeness and fulfillment that doesn’t seem to come.
I myself, am a fellow traveller of that second path. It has taken me a long time and a lot of trouble to realize that greatness is unattainable. Or at least, in the sense that being great means being perfect. Let me preface what comes next and suffix all that just came with this: I do not intend to victimize myself at all. I may sound like I’m complaining but that is just my writing style. I actually do not blame anyone or anything, yes not even Pokémon even though I totally did before, as I don’t find the idea of blaming fruitful in the least. Instead, I try to brainstorm possible causes (the smoke may have been caused by the fire, not the smoke is the fire’s fault). There is no attack intended or desired at anything in particular here.
Now, the problem with greatness is that greatness is akin to infinity. And infinity is a direction, not a destination. This is not a quote scribed by some great sage atop the Himalayas. This is something you’ll find written in a math textbook. Infinity is a direction. So greatness is not something to achieve, it is a direction to travel. It is something to use as a barometer for when making decisions and acting on them, not something to become intimidated and paralyzed by and avoid making decisions. If you think of greatness as achieving the infinite, you will either end up lying to yourself or filling yourself with hopelessness and anxiety.
Greatness and perfection are solely products of the human brain. They don’t exist at all in the physical world around us (just try to get two people to agree on every thing they each think is perfect). They are entirely values-based definitions that every single human brain creates for itself. And like most of the perceptions of the brain, they are highly variable. Have you ever thought something was simply perfect and then later on it just became “meh”? Exactly. And once you realize that that there is no absolute, just a lot of murky, grayness, then you can finally relax and be.
So it is with this acceptance and acknowledgement of the infinite that I begin my new writing hobby with. As I write, I’d like to more than anything be as authentic as possible. Again, not as an ideal to embody and become, but as a signpost to look upon for direction when decisions need to be made. Perfectionism (and if it gives birth to shame, that too) can cause tremendous damage to one’s authenticity, and so I look to cultivate this skill as much as I can. The goal is not to be perfectly authentic. That’s a battle that has been lost before it has even begun. The goal is to walk in that direction, for that is all that one can do.
P.S. And speaking of authenticity, as I’m writing this on the wonderful Day One app on my Mac, this quote pops up at the top:
“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine though every sentence you write, every piece you finish.” — John Jakes
Very well said.
