The problem with perfectionism is you never get anything done. Anything that's done in the real world is by nature imperfect, requiring unsightly, asymmetric compromises. So you sit around doing nothing. It's being told you're to create the website to organize all thought and accomplishments of all humanity, to be presented to God for final judgment, and all of eternity hinges on it. How do you even start? What's ever good enough, complete enough? How can anything be the "best" if it leaves something out? How can anything be "complete" when Gödel showed that no system can fully describe everything, because 'everything' includes the system itself. Strange loops prevent perfectionism becoming practical.
Simple as it is, it's taken me a long time to figure this out. My entire life seems a battle against the 100 foot tsunami face of not-good-enough. Nor is it something I can conquer with realization, although I can mitigate its effects somewhat. Clearing the mind and moving out into the senses, getting outside and moving around and talking to people, playing sports and sleeping well and finishing projects - these help spring me from the prison of perfectionism. But getting going is always the hardest part. Sometimes you have to bootstrap yourself out of bed and out the door even if it seems like a lousy idea.
3 comments:
the perceived need for 'perfection' is imbedded in my deepest subconscious. I don't know why some people struggle to get out of bed, too imtimidated by a world that refuses to be categorized, and others are at home in that same unfamiliarity. Perhaps it's simply an evolution of our first experience in the world, distorted through accretion. Some people simply didn't want to leave the womb.
"Some people simply don't want to leave the womb" ... great way to put it!
Glad you both decided against that thought! Your mom.
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