The Seduction of Perfection
“If you could accept that perfection is impossible, what would you stop obsessing about?” Rupi Kaur
A provocative question, yes? This quote appeared just at the moment I was having conversations with people with whom I work, who express themselves and in the most tender ways tell me they are broken. They feel broken if they are struggling in their relationships, or with their health, or in their work life, or their animal lives—something must be wrong and specifically, wrong with them!
And the wellness (“industry” as its sadly become) immediately jumps in to offer endless messages and quick fixes: that there is some perfect life, that just the right combination of techniques will free us from our suffering. There’s also the implied message that we are to blame for our struggles, that we are being punished, and we are not trying hard enough to optimize our life. As if optimization is the point?!
But a quick fix doesn’t address the underlying reality about this human life: it contains suffering, that’s not a glitch. And the reason we suffer? We want things to be different from how they are. It’s at the heart of all suffering: if only my partner would behave differently, then I’d be happy. If only my boss treated me better, then I’d be happy, if only I had the perfect body, then I’d be happy. Wishing for perfection takes us out of the present. I know that feeling of being in the midst of something wonderful and missing the whole thing because some alternate reality was spinning in my head.
While it is worthwhile to aspire for better things in our lives, often at the deep center of our being is insufficiency. We try to cover up that wound of insufficiency with the idea that we can engineer our lives. We can certainly have intention but how much we control is questionable.
Failing to control life becomes another reason for obsession and to loathe ourselves.
Many years ago, while married to my previous partner, my mother in law was diagnosed with liver cancer. Louise was a firm believer in “creating your own reality” and when this diagnosis arrived, not only did she suffer from liver cancer but also from the idea that she “created her cancer” and that she’d “failed” to reverse it.
Her inability to see beyond the seduction of what she saw as a perfect outcome, ravaged her more than her physical ailments. Louise’s end of life perspective was a profound teaching for me of the importance of self compassion.
Our human experience is not a problem to be solved. It is wonderful to aspire to the best we can be and to the best possible outcomes. That too makes us human.
To come to respect and appreciate our troubles as messengers shows us how our heart, mind, and body presently meet the challenges of life and be in the inquiry of how we can learn to meet them with spaciousness and grace. Even when our experience couldn’t be further away from spaciousness or grace, we can be honest about the struggle and what it is to be human. Many times it’s not that we are broken but that our heart is breaking and that’s natural.
To live authentically is to meet all of life. There’s an internal freedom that comes in meeting our limitations with self compassion and it is a practice. The good news is we can uncover the self compassion that lives within us which is the sweetest of all antidotes to the seduction of perfection.