Perfectionism is a path fraught with peril and frustration. Examining the concept of perfection it is immediately apparent how impossible it is to achieve. For something, anything, to be truly perfect it would have to be perfect for all time and in all states of observation. Putting aside the universal law of entropy for a moment achieving a perfect thing that would be perfect to all observers would mandate that their mental make up (desires, predilections) would never change, and that each observer have the same set of criteria for believing a given phenomenon is perfect. That simply is not going to happen. Life is fluid and changing, and purposefully so. People are individual and no two subjectively receive the same phenomenon the same way. Going back to the law of entropy – anything made perfect will need to be maintained over time and the repairs would have to be perfect as well.
Striving for perfectionism flies in the face of universal law, and individuality. To struggle for it is to perpetually fail and find nothing but frustration. The end result of a perfection is a static state in which no growth can take place.
I have intimate familiarity with two types of perfectionism. Mine, and my Wife’s. My wife is the type of perfectionist who stays up long hours (sometimes all night) and fiddles with minute details of a project with no end in site. She often suffers the health consequences of such an activity, and occasionally fiddles a couple of steps too far and damages the project at hand. On the other hand, when she has made a few too many adjustments to an art piece and gives up in frustration she often goes back to the piece after some temporal separation and realizes that without active eyes of perfection the last changes she made were not ruinous. This lends strength to the concept that as people’s mental states change their perception of a perfection change making it, in fact, not a perfection in the first place.
My style of perfectionism is on the opposite end of the spectrum. I am often caught at the very inception of a project by wanting to get everything perfectly right for its start. I swing back and forth between what time of day is best, what tools are most appropriate, what skills need developing, how to acquire those skills, etc. I also long for some sort of guarantee that the outcome will be perfect even before I begin. Life is not like that. You never know what’s going to happen until you take the first step, and often not until you have taken the last.
Neither of these types of perfectionism is a good thing, but at least my wife gets things done.
The alternative to perfectionism is greatnessism (yes I just made that word up). Doing something great is absolutely achievable. Something that is great is alive and changeable, adaptable to the uniqueness of individuals. Even though there will be shades in the perception of something great it will at least be really good across a broad spectrum of observers. Doing a great job requires an active stance, a liveliness. And, maintaining a status of great at an ongoing task requires continuous development and refinement. That means continuing growth which is the essence of life.
I commit to abandoning perfectionism and plot instead to be great. It is enough.
Stumble it!
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