The Imperfect Perfectionist

nTry your best to imagine a perfect world. Everyone and everything in it would be totally perfect. I suppose that every human being would look alike, act alike, live alike, etc. There would be absolutely nothing to learn in this strange world, whereas we would already know everything. Competition would be wiped out with consistently tied scores. Inventions or new ideas would not even exist. I suppose our world would perfectly expand to accommodate growing populations. Perhaps, there would be no need for children, for if we were perfect, we would never get sick and possibly never die.nnFood would be perfectly arranged and garnished without flaw worldwide. Conflict would not be in the dictionary and it certainly wouldn’t be understood. For that matter, why would we even have a dictionary? Would there even be anything to talk about of interest? Goals, as well, would be nil. Achievement could not possibly exist. nnWow…What a boring and dull world it would be! Try to picture in your mind what this perfect world would look like. Perfect clones would be everywhere. Of course that would include people, animals, mammals, plant life, geology, environment, clear skies, perfect seas, etc. I, for one, would not choose to live in this type of planet. nnIn my younger years, I was a raging perfectionist. Everything had to be just right or I was terribly unsatisfied with myself. I was my own worst enemy. During my first four years of college I was a perfect 4.0. In my fifth year I blew it. Operations Research was the first class I got a B in. Nobody aced that class. Then I took it a step further. I had taken a pass/fail class, “Psychology of the Sexes.” There was no need to study, because I knew that I would get a P for pass. At least I thought I had taken it as a pass/fail class. The fact was that I hadn’t and I ended up with what I called then, “A crummy C.” I’ll never forget begging the school counselor, with teary eyes, to reverse that C, since I had made a mistake. Rules are rules…My GPA went further down, much to my dismay. nnWhen I look back, I have to laugh! It was a good lesson for me to learn. After many years of learning the hard way, I finally gave up and dealt with my own human imperfections instead of constantly referring to my own impossible human expectations. All I had done was caused myself undue stress. At last I could accept my many mistakes and oversights. I did my best to get rid of expectations of both myself and others. Most expectations that we have will not turn out exactly as we envision them to be. Perfectionists are just like the rest of the human race. Each and every one of us are human, therefore we continually make mistakes. Our Creator made us that way. Perfectionists constantly chide themselves and others because of their own imperfections, their expectations and their high standards of everyone who surrounds them. nnAs the years passed, I finally came to the realization that the more mistakes I made, the more I learned. There’s nothing like taking a wrong turn and finding delight in a new discovery. Wrong turns can often put us on the right path; perhaps one that we were longing to or meant to find, but just didn’t know which way to go. A great example is painting a watercolor and accidentally splattering water on it. Once the water has been splattered, it’s very hard to correct. However, in doing so, we may have found that the end effect was pleasing to the eyes! This could transform the Artist’s entire way of painting.nnImperfection is natural and meant to be. Even though our mistakes can often be costly in some form or another, they can teach us valuable learning lessons, but only if we let them. To keep on growing, we have to be willing to step into our very own personal discomfort zones. Chances are that when we take those steps and err, our mistakes will not be repeated as often. I’ve found it so important to stay willing, open and teachable in this wonderful world of imperfection. nnImperfection often causes beautiful creations in a haphazard way. Finally, imperfection serves the imperfect perfectionist in a very enlightening way. The perfectionist's who recognize their imperfection and who accept their flaws are the masters. They are the ones who do the best that they humanly can, but never let failure get in their way.nnn