Pressure to Be Perfect

In the last days of 2009, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the amount of “carry over” I would have into the New Year. Unfinished blogs, undelivered and overdue Christmas presents....and the list goes on. I wanted it to be a “perfect” start to the New Year - a clean slate. All old projects finished, all to-do list items crossed off. But instead of making a race to the finish line on my last “productive" day of 2009, I listened to a really frustrating Kings vs Calgary loss on the radio and drank a beer instead. Clearly one of my New Years resolutions should have been FOCUS!

Intent on learning something from my “failure,” I got thinking about the concept of perfection. Where does the drive to be perfect come from? Does our society expect it? Is it inbred in us as human beings? Or am I just OCD and need to get over it? Frankly all of these explanations are plausible. But let’s try and solve the fundamental problem and figure out what it takes to become perfect, since none of us start out that way.

Let’s start by looking at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition...or as I found in this case, definitions.

1 a : being entirely without fault or defect : flawless b : satisfying all requirements : accurate c : corresponding to an ideal standard or abstract concept d : faithfully reproducing the original; specifically : letter-perfect e : legally valid
2 : expert, proficient
3 a : pure, total b : lacking in no essential detail : complete c obsolete : sane d : absolute, unequivocal e : of an extreme kind : unmitigated

Everyone knows the old saying referenced in definition number 2, “Practice makes perfect.” It’s a hopeful idea. If you just work hard enough at something, you will eventually become perfect. Maybe not flawless, but at least expert and proficient. You don’t need to have special God-given talents to be perfect, you just have to put in the work.

Then somewhere along the way, some well intentioned teacher, coach or personal motivator morphed the saying into “Perfect practice makes perfect.” If you’re an athlete, this makes sense because of the concept of muscle memory. If you do something enough times, you muscles just remember to go that way, even if it’s the wrong way. Huh. So now I not only have to practice, but I probably have to practice even more to overcome any mistakes I made learning the process in the first place. All this adds up to PRESSURE. Pressure, at least for me, leads to procrastination. Which is exactly how I got to the point of writing this blog about the less than perfect start of my New Year.

So if the search for perfection is so full of pressure, why even bother? Let’s just all acknowledge defeat and go have a beer. We bother because it is our nature as human beings to strive to be better, more than we are. And in the end, I think continuing to push higher is more important than being perfect .

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is perfection.