Perfection and Fear

We tend to envisage some people as aiming for excellence and superiority. Outstanding individuals that tenaciously keep pushing forward projects and ideas further, even when delivering the highest of results. We praise this as the mark of sane ambition and competitivity: some even pride on their perfectionism, because it is something that can make us feel over the standards or benchmarks, over the mean and common.

But can we really be superior, or how can we really define superiority. Obviously, it entails a dichotomous comparison, hence a metric that focuses on only some aspects of phenomena. If someone can really achieve that strange quality of being a 'perfectionist' it is wise to ponder: how arbitrary is the definition of perfection to measure things up against to? In misunderstood virtue of how much neglection, of the otherwise, shall someone willingly obtain this or that?

Because if we get too focused on details, or on controlling things, we can become judgmental, inefficient, hostile, selfish and even conjure hostility. For good, we can still do our best realizing that we have what we deeply need anyhow, not out of despair. If our actions or productions fail to meet some specific standard, it is never a disastrous, permanent, nor definitive assessment of our person. One thing is positive motivation, but another thing is fear. And we are perfectly able to deliver good, better and best results without having to control everything involved for an indefinite ammount of time. But, on the other hand, how perfect can something even be if it is so unspontaneous that it demands a transformation of all of its surroundings?

Maybe it is now the time for us to reflect not from deficit: to accept that our lives, and our environment are still as perfect as they can be: not that much in our control after all...    Yet just allowing for the things that can happen in perfect harmony with the people behind that make them happen.

 

Picture by Caleb Woods