I got to thinking about perfection and perfectionism this morning, after a zen zoom meeting in which it came up. The idea is one with which most people are familiar: the desire or felt need to do things perfectly, or, as perfectly as we can. It is usually accompanied by the feeling that we have fallen short of our ideal. This can happen with our performance in any number of activities, such as playing an instrument, or playing a sport, or doing math, or writing an email or essay or book, or giving a talk, or preparing a meal, or cleaning, or driving a car, or fixing a roof, or any of the activities we engage in, ad infinitum. We are always aiming, though rarely succeeding, at reaching perfection.
The question that comes up is why? Why this mania, this desperation to be perfect?
The answers, if there are any, are of course complex. First has to be its source—striving to please or get approval from our parents. Nearly all of us would admit that, deep down, the person(s) we’re always eager to please, regardless of the current form they take (teacher, boss, critic, reviewer, the public, posterity, etc.), is our father and/or mother. And of course this makes sense, for if we do not get the approval of the source of our life and well-being—our parent(s)—our very survival could be at risk; and, not incidentally, our sense of worth. This is clearly why “unconditional love” is now considered so important, why so many parents now say, ad nauseam, “love you.” Even so, the message that most of us get, or hear as the message, is conditional: ‘I’ll love you if you do this, and do it well.’ Which means to most of us: ‘get it right, get it perfect as I see it, or you will not only not be loved, you will be unworthy.’ No parent actually says this. But most of us interpret the message in this way—if only subconsciously. ‘If you will do as I say, if you do it perfectly, only then will you get my approval and love; if you do it wrong, you will lack my approval and be abandoned, worthless.’ No wonder we all want to be perfect.
In modern America, there is an added condition or two to this drive toward perfection. We in the land of “equality” bear the added burden of having to prove our value, our place, earn our love and sense of worth, in the marketplace. That is to say, in more traditional cultures, where social positions are more or less fixed, average people do not have to prove their worth by “doing;” they are considered worthy regardless of what they do or don’t do, simply by the fact of being human. The Dalai Lama was said to have commented about this lack of a fundamental sense of worth in Americans. While he knew that Tibetans had this as a kind of birthright, Americans he observed did not; Americans somehow felt that they had to earn a fundamental sense of worth. And it’s true: we Americans feel we have to “make something” of ourselves. Then, with either our earnings or fame or possessions or the celebration of our colleagues as proof, we can feel worthy—worthy of any social position to which we might aspire. The drive to perfection gets exacerbated by this. It also gets exacerbated by the related fact that most of us live in highly urbanized settings totally unlike the village cultures from which many of our forebears came. And in those small village cultures, embedded in societies similar to the Tibet of the Dalai Lama, one’s sense of worth derived, similarly, just from being known, and accepted/respected as a human being. As such, one was worthy without having to prove anything, without having to makesomething of oneself. One was worthy and known and loved from the outset—unlike those of us in America, where worth must be proven by our accomplishments.
There is an added burden that we moderns share. That is the burden of being, almost always, watchers rather than performers. We have TVs and CDs and DVDs and smart phones that display for us, always, the most perfect performances—in sports, in music, in scholarship, in talking even—known. Where in prior cultures, one had to attend a live musical or sports event where the risk of mistakes was always on display, and everyone knew it, we always watch or hear on our devices perfection—performances where errors or blunders are easily edited out. And those doing the performing are, to begin with, the best the world can offer: be it Valentina Lisitsa playing Beethoven, or Tom Brady throwing perfect passes. The standards we measure ourselves by are, therefore, these super performances, rather than the communal games or singing fests that more often prevailed in previous times, and which we could all join.
Everything leads us, compels us, therefore, to try for perfection. And what this naturally leads to is discontent—with ourselves for not achieving the perfection we hope is possible, and with others for embodying, at least from the outside, the perfection we wish were ours. Perhaps the most graphic example of this latter is found in the arena of feminine appearance. Women (and, increasingly, men) are constantly regaled with products and processes meant to enhance their looks in the marketplace of attracting a mate. Along with those products come the images, constantly before all of us, of impossibly slim and perfect models whose appeal is hyped in every forum: in parties and bars and marriages and sporting events and automobile outings and business meetings, all of which are made to seem perfect by the presence of beautiful, perfect people. No wonder so many teenagers are depressed, and so many attempt suicide. Who could possibly measure up?
With all this, there is, at the same time, an inner dynamic at work, forming resistance to the actual achievement of perfection—even if it were possible. This involves the phenomenon, widely seen in cultures where evil eye is prevalent, of avoiding perfection as a kind of danger. This is especially dramatic in traditional India, where mothers purposely smear the faces of their babies—especially if they are beautiful—to mar or disguise that beauty. Why? Because in evil eye cultures, the attractive child or possession is always at risk—from envious eyes that either lust after that attractive possession, or wish it to be harmed in some way. It is believed that this envious gaze can result in illness or death. The best way to avoid such dire effects (aside from wearing amulets to ward off the eye) is to cover over the obvious beauty or wealth by minimizing it in public. Avoid talking about one’s success or accomplishments. Minimize one’s wealth. Reduce the beauty of a child with dirt or rags. All in the belief that, if envy can be avoided, one will be safe. I myself experienced the latent effects of this as a boy, growing up in a family that definitely believed in evil eye (malocchio in Italian). When I had to perform in piano recitals, for example, and though I never realized it till I was an adult, there was always the inclination to perform well, yes; but dragging in the opposite direction was the impulse to make some mistakes. In short, to avoid looking too good or playing too well, which subconsciously meant attracting the envy of others and the damage of evil eye, I was impelled to fall well short of the perfection I was always striving for. (see my Mal Occhio: The Underside of Vision, [Sanniti: 2008] for more details.)
I have the feeling that more people than myself, whether they believe in or even know about evil eye, sabotage what they do in this way. That is, concurrent with our drive for perfection, we have an opposite drive seeking to avoid doing our best. If this seems like a contradiction, it is that confounding contradiction of which human behavior is so often made.
Perfection, then. We yearn for it more than anything else. At the same time, we seem to avoid it like the plague. Which brings us to the question: is perfection even possible in this world? And if it were, would we, as mere humans, want it? My guess is that most of us don’t really have to worry about this. Nothing we do, or are, is ever perfect. But what if we could approach it? Would any of us make that storied bargain with the devil, or with science, to achieve perfect health (DNA purged of all genes for disease) or wealth or competence or immortality if it were offered? I think not. Perfection, it seems to me, would take us out of the human realm, where “human” means, if we examine it closely, the arena of mistake, of error. Life itself consists mostly of mistakes. Mistakes, errors, failures are what make us human. Each of us, at some level of our being, knows this. I knew this (albeit not consciously) when performing on the piano. And so, we make mistakes; and so, we constantly fall short of our ideal of perfection; and so, we are at one with the rest of humanity, with the rest of life itself; striving to be perfect, driven to achieve perfection, but always knowing that we cannot get there—not least because perfection would be that ultimate end stop, that isolation that none of us truly wants—if, that is, what we mistaken creatures want matters in the first place.
Lawrence DiStasi
