When enough is never enough
by Stephanie Piper
Perfect, it has been said, is the enemy of good.
It was not said by me, at least not the first time. But it struck a nerve, and so I wrote it down and stuck it on my computer. I was hoping it would serve as a kind of talisman against the nail-biting, hair-pulling, garment-rending perfectionism I practice in daily life.
I understand the concept. Perfectionists miss a lot. We discard the apple with a single bruise when we might as easily cut it out and savor the remaining fruit. We trash the paragraph that, while lucid, does not sing. We drive across town to buy lilies when carnations would probably do. We secretly believe that "I'm doing my best" is what people say when they really aren't.
We're the folks for whom the directive "lighten up" was invented.
There are plenty of theories about this behavior. Some experts say it comes from demanding parents who withheld approval; others point to pride, or fear of death. Control is a prevailing theme, the notion that perfection trumps chaos every time. Whatever the source, the perfectionist's mantra is persistent: (almost) never enough.
I have written before about my reverence for perfect moments. Once I sat in the front row for Richard Burton's "Hamlet. " Once I watched Baryshnikov define ballet in a series of impossible leaps. Three times, I saw the faces of my newborn children. These images are part of my permanent collection, and I count myself lucky to have witnessed, on rare occasions, the real deal.
But I struggle to understand that these glimpses of perfection are just that: brief sightings of another world. We may be air-lifted to Mt. Olympus once in a while, but we don't get to linger there. Our territory is down here in bruised-apple-land, a vast, messy place where Olympian standards are at constant odds with that vast, messy thing called human nature. Not everyone holds out for lilies. For every nail-biting perfectionist, there is a horde of laid-back souls who think the carnations look pretty good.
I was reminded of this on a recent family vacation. The beach house teemed with friends and relations; as one crew departed, another rolled into the sandy driveway. I flew around like a manic Martha Stewart, fluffing towels and changing sheets at warp speed. My youngest son stopped me cold as I tucked in a flawless hospital corner.
Mom, he said. Listen. You're trying to make this perfect, and you're missing the fact that it already is. Perfect is being here. Perfect is the smell of hamburgers on the grill and the cousins laughing on the deck.
Perfect has nothing to do with clean sheets and hospital corners.
I am beginning to understand that while Olympian standards may inspire greatness, they may also crush it. Somewhere between ineffable and mediocre lies good. Somewhere between agonizing and settling stretches the wide, clear plain of honest effort. Somewhere in there, enough is just right.
November 7, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 25
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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